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01/08/2002: "Iraqi rebels blast State Department"
Iraqi rebels blast State Department
By Eli J. Lake UPI State Department Correspondent Published 1/7/2002 7:11 PM
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- An Iraqi rebel group denied funding by the State Department last week because of concerns about financial irregularities lashed out Monday, accusing officials of trying to undermine the Bush administration's Iraq policy.
The Iraqi National Congress "believes that preemptive efforts by the Near East Bureau of the Department of State to discredit the INC serve no purpose other than to undermine the U.S. president's declared policy of regime change in Iraq," INC spokesman Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein said in a statement from London Monday.
On Jan. 3, the State Department wrote to the INC, the main Iraqi rebel group supported by the United States. The letter said that -- until the group implemented proper financial controls -- it would receive only enough money to cover its overheads.
The lack of proper financial procedures was initially highlighted in a State Department audit launched last year and exclusively reported in June 2001 by United Press International. The audit was completed last October.
In the letter, the Deputy Director of North Gulf Affairs at the State Department, Tom Krajeski, says the State Department will not fund the INC's Office of Mobilization and Coordination which sends Iraqi exiles to America for non-lethal training because the INC has not sponsored individuals for the program. INC sources say they cannot provide names of people for training because they have no guarantee that they will have funding for the individuals beyond the one month increments the State Department has provided the group since September.
Krajeski also cites problems with the "viability" of the INC's television station, Liberty TV, which broadcasts into Iraq. "We will be examining this program closely in the next month to determine whether USG funds are being well and properly spent," Krajeski writes.
On Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters, "What we told them last week was that because of ... the lack of adequate accounting procedures, that we were not able to continue funding for certain of their programs, and that we would only at this point be able to provide a half-million dollars to sustain their activities through Jan. 31 in order for them to pay operating expenses while they address these issues."
INC officials say, however, they have made a number of these changes already.
"We have done 99 percent of the recommendation," Entifadh Qanbar, the head of the INC Washington office, told UPI on Monday. For example, these changes include changing the time-sheet forms the group uses to pay employees and hiring an accounting firm recommended by the State Department to perform an internal audit.
But there are some steps the INC is reluctant to take. According to Qanbar, his organization is reluctant to provide names of secret operatives working in Arab countries that border Iraq because the information could become public through the Freedom of Information Act. "We have teams working in secret in countries around Iraq," he said. "How are we going to provide that information?"
Other INC sources tell UPI that the audit also asked for the physical locations and descriptions of their offices in Iran, Syria and Britain, a move that could jeopardize their operations in those countries as well.
Indeed, the audit itself, which is subject to the FOIA rules, discloses the locations and pictures of these offices, potential targets for Saddam Hussein's regime.
The INC has fought the State Department almost non-stop since Congress authorized $98 million in training for the group in 1998 as part of the Iraq Liberation Act. That legislation was supposed to be set aside for military training for INC-selected fighters, but it has been stalled within the bureaucracy since its inception.
Last year, the INC proposed an ambitious strategy to distribute international humanitarian aid from the U.N. oil-for-food program. Saddam Hussein's government currently distributes the food and medicine purchased with Iraqi oil profits. Numerous Iraqi exiles charge that Hussein deliberately starves pockets of the country from which there is the greatest opposition to his government.
The INC also hoped to send in information collection teams inside Iraq to collect information on the make-up of Iraq's military and report on basic conditions inside the country, among other things.
Both proposals were opposed by the State Department leading in October to a stand off on the INC's budget. In October, the then-Deputy Assistant Secretary for Gulf Affairs at the State Department, Ryan Crocker, pleaded in a letter to INC leadership to accept a budget for activities that did not include programs inside Iraq. But the rebels rebuffed Crocker, who has since been sent to Kabul to head up the U.S. embassy to Afghanistan.
The latest scuffle between the INC and the State Department may have implications inside Congress. In November, a group of eight Senators and Congressmen from both parties wrote President Bush asking him to release funds, earmarked by Congress, for activities inside Iraq. So far, the White House has yet to respond.
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Posted by Charles Jannuzi