> 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.
That's all changed. When I read the above posting, I remembered hearing a story on the BBC that the funding had been recently restored. In the report, the BBC interviewer took the INC spokesperson to task rather vociferously, basically saying they hadn't accomplished a damn thing vis-a-vis ousting Saddam, and what could now justify the resumption of funding. The INC person didn't really come up with much in the way of explanation, except for some broad pronouncements about the importance of his organization in the context of the endeavor. Here's an excerpt of an article from the BBC site with the same story:
US restores Iraqi opposition funds Thursday, 31 January, 2002, 02:24 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1792000/1792874.stm
The United States has agreed to restore funding to one of the main Iraqi opposition groups, the Iraqi National Congress.
The US had suspended its funding earlier this month because it said the organisation had failed to properly account for millions of dollars in US aid it had received.
Funding has now been resumed at previous levels, US State Department officials said following talks with INC representatives in Washington on Wednesday.
The BBC's John Leyne in Washington says the decision to resume INC funding is likely to be seen as a victory for the hawks in the Bush administration.
(...)
--
/ dave /