Posted on 04/16/2003 12:49:06 PM PDT by knighthawk
WASHINGTON: Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi returned to the capital Baghdad on Wednesday on his first visit to the city since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, an adviser said.
"We've just arrived and we have set up a headquarters in central Baghdad," said Zaab Sethna, who traveled with Chalabi in the motorcade from the southern town of Nassiriya.
"His first plan is to go see his old home and then start building democracy in Iraq," added Sethna, speaking by satellite phone from Baghdad.
Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress), was the first major exile politician to reach Baghdad since the collapse of the government of vanished Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein last week.
The US military flew Chalabi to Nassiriya 10 days ago, giving him a head start over other exiles trying to establish a power base among the Shi'ite population of the south after years of Baathist repression under Saddam.
Chalabi was brought up in the house which is now the Indian embassy in the north Baghdad district of Aadhamiya. After leaving Iraq in 1958 he has lived abroad, mostly in Lebanon, Jordan and Britain.
Sethna said Chalabi had no immediate plans to reclaim the building, which was appropriated by the government after the 1958 revolution. "Many Iraqis will make property claims and there has to be an orderly process," he added.
The INC said Chalabi, a Shi'ite from a prominent family, received a warn welcome in Nassiriya. But other reports suggest that Shi'ite groups close to Iran and hostile to the United States may have a broader following among the southerners.
When the United States convened a meeting of politicians near Nassiriya on Tuesday to work out how Iraq should be ruled, thousands of Shi'ites marched through the town chanting "No to America, No to Saddam."
INC officials have said Iran has allowed Iraqis in exile to cross the border from the east with weapons to take control of areas where US forces are thin on the ground.
A top Iraqi Shi'ite opposition leader, Abdelaziz Hakim, ended 23 years in exile in Iran and went to the southeastern town of Kut on Wednesday to a rapturous welcome, his son said.
Hakim is deputy head of the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which boycotted the Nassiriya meeting and has refused to cooperate with US occupation forces in Iraq.
Analysts say the political future of Iraq depends to a large extent on the battle for the hearts and minds of the Shi'ites, who make up more than half of the population.
Around 120 Iraqi exile fighters from Chalabi's group, trained by US special forces and armed with AK-47s, drove into Baghdad on Wednesday to a low-key welcome.
CNN television said a hand-picked unit of the Free Iraqi Forces, who call themselves the Baghdad brigade, was dressed in US-style military fatigues. "In Baghdad they received a cooler reception than they received in other parts of southern Iraq," a CNN reporter accompanying the fighters said.
"I didn't see any animosity toward them, I saw people waving and cheering. But most people just watched and were curious who these Iraqis were in different uniforms and carrying AK-47s."
"In the southern cities they were cheered, and they (residents) chanted the name of Chalabi."
The US military flew some 700 of the Free Iraqi Forces fighters to Nassiriya with Chalabi on April 6 and Moussawi said some have also deployed in Mosul, where the INC is trying to restore law and order in conjunction with US special forces.
Thanks, but I'll take Chalabi.
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