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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Authorities will arrest prominent politician Ahmad Chalabi after the current Islamic religious holiday for allegedly defaming the Defense Ministry, the defense minister said Friday. Legal proceedings against Chalabi are to begin after the Eid al-Adha holiday ends Sunday, Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said. Shaalan's statement followed allegations by Chalabi that the defense minister shifted $500 million from the ministry. That has led to charges and countercharges by the two Shiite politicians, who are running for parliament on separate tickets in the Jan. 30 national elections. "We will arrest him and turn him over to the Interpol,"...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iraq's interim defense minister said on Friday the government would arrest Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi after the Eid al-Adha holiday for allegedly maligning the defense ministry. "We will arrest him and hand him over to Interpol. We will arrest him based on facts that he wanted to malign the reputation of the defense ministry and defense minister," Hazim al-Shaalan told Al Jazeera television, adding the measures would start after the Muslim holiday which began on Jan. 20.

Despite the lack of security in Iraq today, a democratic, pluralistic Iraq is the only acceptable outcome. Iraq's unity can be best secured through the involvement of all groups in the political process. The concerns being voiced by many in the international community, of the fear of Sunni marginalization and Shiite domination, were the same concerns that allowed Saddam to last as long as he did. Those arguments are reappearing today, to close the door of hope and opportunity for the Iraqi people. But Saddamism without Saddam is simply not an option. Iraq's people are already realizing their objective of...

BAGHDAD, June 30 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein, who brutalised Iraqis for decades, said good morning and sought to ask some questions when the United States handed him over to Iraqi justice on Wednesday, a witness said. Saddam, who was captured hiding near his hometown of Tikrit in December, looked in good health as he appeared before an Iraqi judge in the first legal step towards a trial for the cruelties he inflicted during his 35 years of power. "Saddam said good morning and asked if he could ask some questions," Salem Chalabi, a lawyer leading the work of a tribunal...

<p>WASHINGTON — A senior Defense official placed under investigation by the FBI (news - web sites) on allegations that he tried to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts toward friends has been removed from office, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials confirmed Friday.</p>

Liberals on Capitol Hill and in the media are screaming, "Where are the weapons?" Since the White House had argued that disarming Saddam was the main reason for going to war, not finding his forbidden weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) all lined up like prizes at a seaside shooting gallery has excited the president's political enemies to cry foul. Ewan Buchanan, spokesman for chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, assures Insight that "it's far too early to tell" whether forbidden weapons remain in Iraq or where they might be. "It doesn't surprise me that U.S. forces haven't found anything yet....

News Analysis by TWD's Editor, Shane Cory. Missing Weapons? Blame the Russians October 28, 2004 09:43 AM The Washington Times dropped to the bottom of the integrity scale by leading with a story that definitively blamed the loss of hundreds of tons of high explosives (HE) on the Russian military. Their story was based mainly on the views of one controversial Pentagon staffer, John A. "Jack" Shaw. Earlier this year Shaw was reportedly involved in a controversy involving the former Iraqi golden boy and now criminal, Ahmed Chalabi. The scandal involved the awarding of cell phone contracts to three companies...

...Iraq's top customer was Russia, whose firms bought $19.2 billion worth of Iraq oil and exported $3.3 billion in humanitarian goods. Fellow Security Council member France was a distant but significant second, at $4.4 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. China is also high on the list. Oil voucher recipients are alleged to include the Russian presidential office, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and even former Oil for Food program director Benon Sevan of the U.N.... Against this backdrop, it is impossible to take Secretary-General Annan seriously when he calls it "inconceivable" that this could have affected the Security Council's...

Lawyers for Ahmad Chalabi are prepared to prove in an American court that Jordan's King Abdullah attempted to sell arms to Saddam Hussein in 1992 when he was only a prince and not heir to the throne. A handwritten letter to Saddam from his late son Uday, dated February 9, 1992, lists prices for old Soviet military equipment and says that then-Prince Abdullah recommended Uday contact an intermediary identified as "Jack al-Khayyat," who could arrange the sale. The letter says the proposal was made to Iraqi sources in Jordan through Mr. al-Khayyat. Prince Abdullah sought to import the equipment and...

DOCUMENTS LINK IRAQ, BIN LADEN Toronto Star, 26th April Top-secret Iraqi intelligence documents, unearthed by the Toronto Star inthe bombed-out headquarters of the dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service in Baghdad, have established the first clear link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. The documents were found by correspondent Mitch Potter, the Star's Jerusalem bureau chief. Potter, who has been in and out of Iraq since the war began, was digging through the rubble of the Mukhabarat's Baghdad headquarters with his translator Amir when they uncovered the intelligence treasure trove. Bin Laden's name appears three times in the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A judge has dismissed counterfeiting charges against a senior political figure once considered a front-runner to become Iraq's leader, authorities said Friday. The charges against Ahmad Chalabi, a wealthy Iraqi exile and one-time Pentagon favorite, were dismissed ''for lack of evidence,'' said Zuhair al-Maliky, Iraq's chief investigative judge. Al-Maliky told The Associated Press that the charges could be refiled, however, should more evidence be uncovered. The decision to drop the case was made during a court session Thursday. Chalabi has denied any wrongdoing. ''I am sure they are not going to find any evidence against Chalabi, because...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Salem Chalabi, the man charged with organizing the trial of Saddam Hussein, will be removed from his post by the interim government because he failed to return to the country to face murder charges, the Iraqi National Congress said Tuesday. There was no confirmation from the office of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, where a spokesman said the prime minister hadn't signed any document that would remove Chalabi from his post overseeing Saddam's trial. But Chalabi, reached by Knight Ridder in London, said he had been removed and declined to comment further. INC spokesman Haider Musawi...

FBI counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office may have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case. In their interviews, the FBI agents have also named two Israeli diplomats stationed in Washington and asked whether they would be willing recipients of sensitive intelligence, the sources added. The investigators have asked questions about personnel in the office of...

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi Islamist group has said it tried to assassinate Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi this week and that four men died in the attack, Al Jazeera television said on Saturday. The channel said it received a videotape from a group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq (news - web sites) in which one of the four men, who later died of his wounds, talks to camera. A group with the same name has said in an internet statement that it was holding two French journalists kidnapped on Aug. 20. Chalabi, now a vocal critic of U.S....

Washington -- FBI counterintelligence agents are investigating whether several Pentagon officials leaked classified information to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to a law enforcement official and other people familiar with the case. [...]

Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician and former US favourite, has said that criminal charges against him in Iraq have been dropped. A judge issued a warrant in August over an alleged counterfeit operation but no action was taken for Mr Chalabi's arrest when he returned to Iraq. Mr Chalabi also announced that murder charges had been dropped against his nephew, Salem, currently out of Iraq. The fact of the charges being dropped could not be immediately confirmed. On Wednesday morning, Ahmed Chalabi survived what seemed to be an assassination attempt when gunmen opened fire on his motorcade. The BBC's Paul...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen opened fire on Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi's convoy on Wednesday, wounding two associates, an aide to Chalabi said. The aide, Mithal al-Alousi, told Reuters the convoy was hit on Wednesday morning as Chalabi traveled back to Baghdad from the southern city of Najaf. He escaped injury. Chalabi, a former Pentagon ally who lost favor with Washington, has been accused by an Iraqi judge of counterfeiting. Chalabi, a Shi'ite, has tried to gain prominence in Shi'ite circles in recent months.

On May 13, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy berated Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemning "disaster after disaster" in U.S. Iraq policy. Well before the Abu Ghraib revelations, Kennedy has sought to transform Iraqi freedom from a philosophical and strategic issue into a partisan debate, without regard either to reality or result. On April 6, Kennedy called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam." On March 5, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, took the president to task for allegedly exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq: "The evidence so far leads to...

DOHA (AFP) - US-backed Iraqi police forces raided the Baghdad office of the Iraqi National Congress of disgraced Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi and expelled party members, an INC official said. "Residential homes and offices affiliated to the INC were attacked yesterday. Today ... the locality (Baghdad office) was besieged by US and Iraqi forces. They then raided the place, which is referred to in Baghdad as 'Chinese House' and is now occupied," Mithal al-Alusi told Al-Jazeera news channel. "All elements (party members) were driven out. In other words, the place was occupied and seized," he said. The raid came more...

Any semblance of a ceasefire evaporated today as fierce fighting erupted around the Shrine of Imam Ali, Shii Islam's holiest site. Even if Iraqi forces lead the charge into the Shrine of Imam Ali, Iraqi Shia will blame the U.S. for any damage. Even if a peaceful solution is found, the U.S. will have lost out. It didn't have to be this way. Sadr was not initially popular among Iraqi Shia. Many Iraqis consider him responsible for the April 10, 2003 murder of Shia cleric Majid al-Khoei. Many Iraqi Shia ridiculed Sadr's October 10, 2003 declaration of a parallel government...