Summit Statement ‘Dangerous,’ Chalabi Warns in an Interview
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

CAIRO, Egypt – Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Ahmad Chalabi, is warning against handing the Arab League too large a role in facilitating Iraq’s political transition, raising the prospect that a conference concluded here Monday may undermine Iraq’s democratic institutions.
Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister al-Jaafari and President Talabani participated over the weekend in a conference that endorsed a statement calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq within an unspecified time frame. The conference’s final communique, drafted after Mr. Talabani had departed for Tehran, Iran, also recognized a “right of resistance” against foreign soldiers but condemned terrorism against Iraqi civilians.
The statement from Iraqi leaders representing all three major factions in the country was released as terrorists were stepping up their attacks. Yesterday, a car bomber killed 17 Iraqis in Kirkuk, and three more American soldiers were slain in separate attacks, raising the death count for GIs to 2,100, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, the wire reported yesterday that terrorists fired mortar rounds at a ceremony in Tikrit commemorating the handover of one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces to the Iraqi government. The attack forced the American ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the American military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, to scramble for cover inside the palace.
Separately, the Pentagon plans to reduce the number of American forces in Iraq by as many as three combat brigades by early next year, barring any sudden developments there, the Washington Post reported. Under a “moderately optimistic” scenario, by the end of 2006, the number of troops could drop to fewer than 100,000 from more than 150,000 now, Pentagon officials said, according to the Post.
In a phone interview with The New York Sun yesterday, Mr. Chalabi, who did not participate in the Arab League parley, said most Iraqis rejected talk of timetables for when American soldiers should leave Iraq. “I think it does not reflect the wishes of the Iraqi people,” he said. He also called the provision distinguishing between terrorism and resistance “very, very dangerous.”
“They tried to please everyone and they pleased no one,” he said. “Which party will decide what is terrorism? This is the kind of thing that is very, very dangerous.”
But the deputy prime minister was even more critical of the auspices under which that provision was forged. “There is general rejection of the notion that Iraqi affairs should be determined by non-Iraqis choosing Iraqis in a process that is not democratic,” Mr. Chalabi said. “I believe any meeting outside of Iraq with political leaders will somehow detract from our parliament, the elected assembly. Those are the proper places for these kinds of discussions.”
Mr. Chalabi also questioned the wisdom of holding a political conference with men like President Talabani and leaders who claimed to speak for the Sunni insurgents. “People were under severe pressure to attend this conference,” he said. “I heard that they were under some pressure. I don’t know who put the pressure to have the president of Iraq to sit on an equal basis with people not representative of Iraqis, but it is a strange thing to me.”
The American State Department on Tuesday endorsed the Arab League conference as a constructive mechanism to draw in Sunni Arab leaders who until recently have spurned most advances to participate in the government that replaced Saddam Hussein’s regime. When asked for a reaction on the call for eventual withdrawal of troops, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said he thought it was “perfectly consistent with where the multinational forces and the United States government are. You know, as Iraq – Iraqi forces are more capable and stand up and the institutions get stronger, then of course, the multinational force presence will be reduced.”
On the statement regarding “resistance,” Mr. McCormack said America “had no quarrel” with “the right to “peaceful protest.”
If the Bush administration favors bringing in the Arab League into a more robust role in shaping the Iraqi government, it would not be the first time. In 2004, the president handed over authority to a former Arab League official, Lakhdar Brahimi, to help select an interim government in Baghdad, forgoing plans to hold elections until January 2005. Mr. Brahimi, with approval from the White House, ended up selecting many ministers who are now under investigation in Baghdad for graft and corruption. Mr. Chalabi was pointedly excluded from that regime.
Mr. Chalabi earlier this month returned from Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and Vice President Cheney. The visit infuriated many of his anti-war critics, who simultaneously accuse him of having no influence in Iraq and yet having the ability to snooker the entire American intelligence community into believing Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and maintained ties to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Chalabi last month split with the United Iraqi Alliance, the ruling Shiite Arab party in Baghdad, and has announced he will run candidates on his own list representing the Iraqi National Congress.
In the interview yesterday, he said that he would campaign on the question of troop withdrawal by touting the need for Iraq to “have a strong military.” But he said that it is important that this military receive weapons and training from America, anticipating that it will be “associated with America for years.”
Mr. Chalabi said, “All the units are almost up, we are short two brigades, around two brigades. Now it is time to look for the effective way to get this army to be ready. We must get American weaponry to be in tune with U.S. forces. This will raise the morale of our troops, too, if they are fighting with American weapons.”