by David S. Cloud, "Chicago Tribune", March 4, 1998

WASHINGTON -- He was, until 1996, an American client, installed with covert CIA backing in northern Iraq to harass Saddam Hussein. Today, the White House treats Ahmad Chalabi and his dwindling band of followers with polite disdain.

Even as the Clinton administration ponders a more aggressive policy aimed at toppling Hussein, it wants little to do with Chalabi, one of the few veterans of the Iraqi opposition with experience in mounting such a difficult operation.

The reasons for the split are complicated, reflecting U.S. doubts about whether outside pressure is the way to dislodge Hussein from power and whether Chalabi, a former banker who fled Jordan in 1989 after being accused of embezzlement, is a credible leader of the badly fractured opposition.

"There's no gain for us in badmouthing the guy," said a senior White House adviser. "He ain't much but he has tried hard, and there's no reason to cast aspersions on the goals he's working on."

Chalabi, for his part, has accused the Clinton administration of backing away from promises of military support in 1996, when Hussein dispatched tanks to the city of Irbil and brutally crushed the CIA-backed opposition forces then operating in northern Iraq.

Ever since, covert aid to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has dried up, leaving a residue of ill will toward the CIA and an evaporation of support among exiled Iraqis. Without U.S support, the INC is a paper tiger, experts say.

So the INC minimizes its awkward strategic differences with the Clinton administration.

"We don't have a disagreement with the U.S. administration as a whole," said Nabee Musawi, head of political liaison for the INC. "We have a disagreement with a few people who are behind a policy we don't agree with."

U.S. policy, described by Musawi as the "silver-bullet option," looks toward an overthrow of Hussein by disgruntled members of his Tikriti clan or by military officers.

Chalabi -- an amiable former professor who received his doctorate at the University of Chicago and speaks flawless English -- portrays the INC as a "democratic movement" dedicated to creating a pluralistic society in Iraq, a vision that many U.S. officials say is unrealistic, given the country's authoritarian past.

Appealing for U.S. assistance at a congressional hearing Monday, Chalabi said, "The INC's popular base is its greatest strength ... . I am here to ask for overt U.S. support, not covert U.S. action. Saddam Hussein can only be removed by a popular insurgency; he is coup-proof."

Despite icy relations, Chalabi and his aides have come to Washington in the past two weeks and held meetings with officials at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, pushing for U.S. support for a new plan to destabilize Hussein.

But even as he did so, Chalabi made public a 1993 letter from Vice President Al Gore showing just how transitory such support can be. "I assure you that we will not turn our backs on the

Kurds or the other Iraqi communities subjected to the repression of Saddam Hussein's regime," Gore wrote, adding a promise to give "whatever additional support we can reasonably provide to encourage you in your struggle for a democratic Iraq."

Chalabi says he needs $100 million to set up a government in exile and arm a military force -- this time in southern Iraq -- along with an explicit commitment of American air protection against Hussein's troops.

Chalabi suggested the U.S. give the INC a loan from frozen Iraqi assets in the U.S. that he said would be paid back from oil revenues after Hussein is overthrown.

Although U.S. officials say they have no intention of supporting Chalabi's plan, they have met with him anyway, partly to demonstrate to Republican critics on Capitol Hill that they are at least considering other avenues besides UN diplomacy or American bombing to deal with the continuing problem of Hussein.

Chalabi's critique of the Clinton administration's Iraq policy has struck a chord with congressional Republicans eager to highlight differences between themselves and the White House on how to deal with Hussein.

Nonetheless, the Republicans have difficulty swallowing Chalabi's claims to be able to mobilize a broad-based movement against Hussein. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) acknowledged there are doubts about the INC, including doubts about whether its disparate partnership of Kurdish,

Muslim and Christian groups can overcome infighting.

Chalabi comes from a prominent Iraqi family of merchants and politicians that fled Baghdad in the 1950s during the revolution that ultimately led to Hussein's takeover. He now lives in London, where the INC maintains its lone remaining office.

Chalabi fled Jordan in 1989 after the government accused him and several relatives of embezzling millions of Jordanian dinars from Petra Bank, which he controlled. Chalabi, who denies the allegations, was later tried in absentia, found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was assessed a fine of $46 million.

Asked about the allegations Monday, Chalabi said the charges were trumped up by the Jordan's King Hussein and the military, which he described as sympathetic to Hussein, as punishment for his opposition to the Baghdad regime.

A spokesperson for the Jordanian Embassy in Washington said the conviction of Chalabi has not been overturned.

Despite such problems, some experts think that Chalabi has the contacts among Iraqi opposition groups and the logistical talents to re-create the opposition government inside Iraq with substantial U.S. help.

"His record is not bad when it comes to building a small but useful force in the north," said Amatzia Baram, an Iraq expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "And people on the inside have to know that there are people on the outside who consider Saddam illegitimate."

Without a strong central authority to replace Hussein, the U.S. fears, the country will splinter into ethnic and religious parts, possibly including a Kurdish enclave in the north and a Shiite Muslim zone potentially hostile to the U.S. in the oil-rich areas of the south.

One of the reasons that Chalabi, a secular Shiite, was able to unite Iraq's disparate opposition groups under the INC umbrella, even if only for a time, was that he is not perceived as a threat, experts says.

"His strength is also his strongest weakness," said Frank Anderson, who oversaw the CIA's operation in Iraq as Near East Division chief until 1996. "He's not identified with nor does he have a power base in any ethnic group to be a threat to anybody else."