WASHINGTON – A leading Arab newspaper is reporting today that the Central Bank of Iraq is in the process of retrieving some $200 million withdrawn earlier this month by the country’s defense minister for a mysterious arms deal.

Al-Hayat quotes an official Iraqi source as saying the governor of CBI, Sinan al-Shabibi, ordered the Lebanese and Jordanians to send back cash payments last week when he learned the Defense Ministry had withdrawn at least $200 million in cash for an arms purchase without his consent.

In an interview yesterday, a spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition made up mainly of Shiite parties that is expected to win the most seats in the January 30 elections, said he expected the new assembly that will take power next month to investigate the charges that the defense minister, Hazim Shaalan, tried to steal some $300 million from the government this month.

“I expect the new elected national assembly will investigate all charges of corruption of the current Iraqi interim government including the latest Shaalan transfer of funds to Lebanon,” Entifadh Qanbar said in a phone interview from Michigan, where he is campaigning for Iraqi-American votes in the upcoming election.

“Mr. Shaalan has ties to the former Iraqi intelligence and these ties have discredited him and discredited many others who have these ties and occupy important positions in the interim government,” Mr. Qanbar added. “I would advise Mr. Shaalan to acknowledge his past and ask for an apology from the Iraqi people.”

The latest round of political sparring in Iraq comes in the context of renewed threats to voters who will elect a 275-person assembly that will write Iraq’s constitution and choose its executive government. A man identified as Al Qaeda-affiliated terror master Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released a tape to Islamic Web sites condemning the election, branding candidates as “demiidols” and saying those who vote for them “are infidels,” according to the Associated Press. The AP quoted the speaker as saying, “We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology. Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it.”

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Prime Minister Allawi said, “The terrorists and the evil forces are trying to break our will. They are trying to stop democracy from happening in Iraq.”

In the run-up to the elections, most candidates for office running on party slates have chosen to remain anonymous in light of assassination threats from the insurgency. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, the American ambassador in Baghdad, John Negroponte, said Iraqi and American authorities were taking a number of security precautions to maximize the number of voters in the elections for this coming Sunday.

“The important thing is security, and we are doing our utmost to work with the Iraqi armed forces and their police to make sure that the necessary security measures are in place so that every Iraqi eligible to do so can exercise his or her right to vote,” the ambassador said. Mr. Negroponte also said American authorities were investigating the story that first appeared in the New York Times Saturday of the missing $300 million.

He said the charges, first leveled by the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, “appeared in the context of an electoral campaign here, and campaign charges that are being exchanged between two of the principal candidates. So I’m not entirely certain what to make of them. But I would note that they come up one week before the election date.”

On Friday Mr. Shaalan told Al Jazeera that Iraqi authorities were going to arrest Mr. Chalabi and hand him over to Interpol in Jordan for an outstanding 1992 warrant regarding his role in the collapse of the Petra Bank. Over the weekend, President al-Yawar told the Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation that no such arrests were planned. Mr. al-Yawar’s political slate includes Mr. Shaalan.

“Interpol is not looking for Mr. Chalabi,” Mr. Qanbar, who has worked with the INC leader since the early 1990s, told The New York Sun yesterday. “Interpol denied the request by the Jordanian government because the court which sentenced him is not a legitimate court, even by Jordanian standards. It is a military court.”

One issue that is emerging in the final week of the Iraqi campaign is whether a new government will demand a timetable for the withdrawal of American soldiers. In recent interviews, leading members of the major Shiite slate candidates, such as the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Ayatollah al-Hakim, are saying that negotiations for a withdrawal will be one of the first orders of business for the new government. The second plank of Mr. al-Hakim’s slate, the United Iraqi Alliance, says an elected government will negotiate a time line for the withdrawal of troops.