Pentagon favourite rules out leadership role

Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon’s favourite to lead Iraq, today denied he was a candidate for the top job.

The head of the Iraqi National Congress, who returned to the country from exile in Britain and America, also believed Saddam Hussein was alive and “moving around” in Iraq.

And he criticised United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for smoking a cigar with Saddam.

The Iraqi people viewed the UN as a “de facto ally of Saddam“, he claimed.

Mr Chalabi, accompanied by US soldiers, returned to Iraq for the first time since he was a child after Baghdad fell to the coalition.

Many view his return from exile in the west as the first step in a bid to succeed Saddam as Iraqi leader.

He is said to be favoured by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but not by the entire administration.

But asked if he wanted to lead Iraq, Mr Chalabi said: “No. I am not a candidate for any political position. I don’t want to do a political role now.

“I want to work on building civil society because this is the basis of democracy.

“The Iraqi people want democracy, they deserve it and they can get it done,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“The people are ready for it. They are fed up with totalitarianism, they are fed up with repression, they are looking for a better life, and they realise full well now that they can influence this.

“Iraqis are not a vanquished people, they think they have won. They are not a people who are conquered, they are a people who feel now victorious.”

Pressed about his potential bid for leadership, Mr Chalabi said: “I don’t want this to be the liberation of Iraq and the enslavement of me.”

The suggestion that separate factions were taking over in different towns was a “distorted picture of the reality“, Mr Chalabi said.

“I don’t think anybody has control over towns. Nobody has control over streets at this time.”

The UN deserved only a “limited role” in the rebuilding of Iraq, he said.

“The United Nations cannot play a significant role in Iraq because it has little credibility in Iraq and the people of Iraq view it as a de facto ally of Saddam.

“Kofi Annan said ’I smoked a cigar with him, six cigars, and he is a man I can do business with’.

“Smoking a cigar with Saddam is an act that is viewed with much derision by the Iraqi people.

“Having a United Nations bureaucrat in some job in Baghdad neither makes the work more efficient or more legitimate.”

Mr Chalabi said the INC had received intelligence about the movements of Saddam and his sons, Qusay and Uday.

He added: “We cannot locate Saddam so that we will have a coincidence of time and position simultaneously to locate him.

“But we are aware of his movements and we are aware of the areas that he has been to and we learn of this within 12 to 24 hours.

“We will work to develop more information about his whereabouts.

“Yes, he is in Iraq. Yes, he is moving around. We received intelligence about his son Qusay yesterday. The night before he was seen in Habbaniyah.”