WASHINGTON (AP) – Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi launched his quest for political rehabilitation Wednesday with a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a polite welcome from the White House.

For Rice, it was an opportunity mostly to go over energy and finance issues, which Chalabi oversees in Baghdad, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said

The Bush administration has an interest in meeting with a wide range of Iraqi officials, of which Chalabi is only one, Ereli said.

“It was a good meeting. They had a wide-ranging discussion,” the spokesman said after the half-hour session in Rice’s office.

Chalabi said the meeting went “very well.” He brushed aside questions by reporters on whether he had given misleading information to the Bush administration before the war with Iraq.

“It’s more important to look to the future than to the past,” Chalabi said.

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan, announcing Chalabi also would be given a chance to see Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Stephen Hadley, said “he’s seen as an elected leader of the Iraqi government and one of a number that we have met with in recent months.”

“The Iraqi people are deciding their future, and they have a representative government that was elected by the Iraqi people,” McClellan said. “We are very supportive of helping the Iraqi people move forward and build a democratic future.”

On Capitol Hill, Democrats greeted Chalabi’s arrival by calling on Congress’

Republican-run intelligence committees to subpoena him to testify about his role in providing prewar information about Iraq that turned out to be false, and allegations that he may be linked to the leaking of sensitive U.S.

secrets to Iran.

In a letter to the intelligence panels, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., wrote that rather than meeting with top administration officials, testimony to those committees “would be a more appropriate venue for an official meeting for Mr. Chalabi.”

Standing in a State Department doorway earlier, Chalabi defended his call for closer Iraqi relations with Iran. The two countries have a long border and “we are neighbors,” he said.

Chalabi also called for improved relations with Syria, which he said could give Iraq an opportunity to try to persuade Damascus “to stop supporting terrorist incursions” into his country.

The talks at the State Department were declared off-limits to reporters and photographers, which is unusual since cameras are regularly permitted to record the start of Rice’s meetings with prominent foreign visitors. But without explanation the cameras were excluded, as they were when Rice met with Chalabi two years ago when she was President Bush’s national security adviser.

The State Department’s deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli, defended the face-to-face meeting with Rice. “He is an official and a representative of the government of Iraq,” Ereli said Tuesday.

The spokesman also noted that Chalabi was deeply involved in redeveloping Iraq’s energy sector, a high U.S. priority.

Before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Chalabi, then living in exile, was a favorite of the Defense Department and the U.S. Congress.

He was seen as a possible leader in a post-Saddam era, but fell from favor after his claims that Saddam possessed doomsday weapons were discredited.

Chalabi, on an eight-day visit, is scheduled to meet next Monday with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and with other members of Bush’s Cabinet.

A former banker and MIT graduate, Chalabi has been a controversial figure on several fronts, accused sometimes of being an Iranian.

Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, dismissed the allegation last week.

Clawson, an analyst who specializes on Iran, said, “He is not an agent, but he wants to work with Iran to the extent it is compatible with Iraq’s best interest.”