Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday evening, Secretary Powell vowed, “once they are liberated, we will work with the Iraqi people to help them create a country that is peaceful, democratic, and unified, living in peace with its neighbors.” It’s an appealing vision. But while Mr. Powell has publicly been proclaiming it, his top aides have been privately working to undermine it.

On Saturday, for instance, a group of about 300 free Iraqis — with State Department encouragement — held a meeting in London to launch a new opposition group called “Independent Iraqis for Democracy.” Even at this late stage, the IID’s founding is significant because it represents the fruition of years of effort by the CIA and State Department to create a counterweight to Iraq’s most prominent opposition activist, Ahmad Chalabi, and his umbrella organization, the Iraqi National Congress. Mr. Chalabi is now in Northern Iraq playing a constructive role.

Mr. Chalabi has been on the outs with the CIA and State for years. The animosity goes back to 1996, when Mr. Chalabi warned then-CIA director John Deutch that a coup plot to take out Saddam had been infiltrated by Saddam’s agents. His warnings were ignored, the coup attempt went ahead anyway, and Langley was left with egg on its face.

State dislikes Mr. Chalabi because it can’t control him and he doesn’t fit its mold for an Iraqi leader. Whereas Foggy Bottom would be content with a kinder, gentler dictator to maintain “stability” in the region in the post-Saddam era, Mr. Chalabi is an unabashed democrat with a clear distaste for the Middle East status quo. Now Mr. Chalabi’s detractors, desperate to find a last-minute alternative, have found their man: Adnan Pachachi.

Mr. Pachachi, an 80-year-old former Iraqi foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations who has been living in exile in the United Arab Emirates, has played no formal role in the Iraqi opposition movement, despite attempts to woo him in the 1990s by former State Department and National Security Council official Martin Indyk and more recently by Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush’s special envoy to the Iraqi opposition.

Mr. Pachachi is an anti-Chalabi: A Sunni Muslim (Mr. Chalabi is a Shiite); an anti-American (Mr. Chalabi supports the Bush position), and an Arab nationalist (Mr. Chalabi is a secular liberal). And Mr. Pachachi’s new group, the IID, is diametrically opposed to the INC on the basic issues: Whereas the INC favors the war, the IID opposes it, hoping instead that Saddam will leave on his own. And while the INC is skeptical of post-war involvement by the United Nations, Mr. Pachachi wants an interim Iraqi government to be led by the U.N. with the help of “Iraqi technocrats.”

For a sampling of Mr. Pachachi’s views, here are some choice excerpts from his personal memoirs, “Iraq’s Voice at the United Nations, 1959–1969: A Personal Record” (Quartet Books, 1991):

• “I have always retained a soft spot for Khrushchev because of his wholehearted support for the Arab position.” (p. 11)

• “Many would say it is a pipedream, but…I hope I may live to see the time when Iraq and Syria are united in one great Arab state…” (p. 172)

• On the establishment of Israel: “This basic injustice was so glaring and obvious that after 60 years I am still unable to accept it.” (p. 19)

• “With the exception of Eisenhower’s noble stand against the Anglo-Franco-Israeli aggression in 1956, United States policies in the Arab Near East have been an unmitigated disaster for the Arabs.” (p. 12)

• “The Arab position has been greatly weakened as a result of the conclusion by Egypt of a separate peace with Is rael.” (p. 167)

• “From 1961 until I left the U.N. in 1969 I was mainly concerned with the Palestine question.” (p. 12)

• “I was known in Kuwait, from my stout defense of Iraq’s claim in the Security Council in 1961 and my successful efforts to prevent the admission of Kuwait to U.N. membership from 1961 to 1963.” (p. 88)

Mr. Pachachi only renounced his 40-year-old view that Kuwait had no right to independence in 1999. Given Mr. Bush’s ambitious policy to create a democratic Iraq followed by further liberalization in the Arab world, Mr. Pachachi doesn’t appear to be the kind of guy suited to carry out that mission.

Mr. Pachachi also appears to have forged an alliance with Laith Kubba, an Iraqi intellectual who is also in the anti-Chalabi camp. Mr. Kubba is an officer at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, and was formerly a member of the radical Al-Dawa party. He recently formed his own organization, the Iraqi National Group, which appears to have now merged with the IID.

Even as this new group is set up, $7 million in funding due to the Iraqi National Congress is being held up due to a State Department-concocted technicality, hamstringing the group’s efforts to assist coalition forces in the war to liberate their country. Senator Brownback and the former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, have called for that money to be released.

That these kinds of games are still being played at this stage bodes ill for President Bush’s Iraq policy. And that America is still wooing characters like Adnan Pachachi is ammunition to all those, both in America and abroad, who doubt that Mr. Powell is serious when he speaks of transforming Iraq into “a country that is peaceful, democratic, and unified, living in peace with its neighbors.”