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Iraqi chalabi former pentagon protege splits with US { May 20 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040520200320.04mk7hr1.htmlhttp://www.spacewar.com/2004/040520200320.04mk7hr1.html
Iraq's Chalabi, former Pentagon protege, splits with US allies
BAGHDAD (AFP) May 20, 2004
Ahmed Chalabi, who Thursday cut ties with the US-led coalition in Iraq, was a long-time Pentagon protege whose intelligence reports bolstered Washington's claims that Saddam Hussein stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
Chalabi, who amassed a banking fortune and was convicted in absentia by Jordan for fraud, has been increasingly critical of US policy in Iraq as Washington has gradually distanced itself from him.
The prominent Shiite has recently come under the US microscope over claims his Iraqi National Congress (INC) party fed false information to the US government and media before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Wednesday the Pentagon had halted its monthly payments of 340,000 dollars to Chalabi's party and would seek other intelligence sources on Iraq.
The scion of a wealthy banking clan, Chalabi cosied up to US Vice President Dick Cheney and to influential hawks at the Pentagon, despite his dubious record in Jordan, becoming a leading light in the exiled Iraqi political opposition.
Born in 1945, the Ahmed was 13 years old when his family fled Iraq after the 1958 revolution deposed the British-controlled King Faisal II.
Chalabi, with degrees from the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has lived more time in London and the United States than in his native Iraq.
His life in relative luxury abroad has been used as a prime argument by his detractors who say he lacks a solid power base in Iraq.
In 1992, he tried to unite Arab Shiites, Sunnis and Iraqi Kurds under his INC banner.
From a base in Iraqi Kurdistan he enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, he engineered an uprising against Saddam in 1995. The operation failed and the CIA dumped him.
By 1998, his political networking became successful enough to persuade former US president Bill Clinton's administration to list "regime change" in Iraq as one of its objectives, paving the way towards the 2003 war.
In 1992, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison in bsentia Jordan for fraud after his Petra Bank folded, bankrupt 12 years after he set it up.
Chalabi has dismissed the case as a conspiracy orchestrated by the Saddam regime, the Jordanian government and Mohammed Said Nabulsi, head of the Jordanian central bank.
Two of his brothers, implicated in the liquidation of other financial institutions and suspected of having a hand in the Petra case, were found guilty of fraud in Switzerland in September 2000.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse.
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