Armed with promises of aid, Wolfowitz to seek Turkish support for U.S. invasion of Iraq

WASHINGTON, November 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States continues to support the Iraqi opposition in exile with an eye to forming a post-Saddam Hussein regime. At the same time, Washington is seeking Turkish support for a possible invasion of Iraq.

This even-handed approach has led to divisions in the kaleidoscope of Iraqi opponents representing differing politics, ethnic groups and religions.

However, the very diversity of Iraqi opposition factions has led some U.S. officials to question whether it is possible to form a stable regime after ousting the Iraqi leader.

Washington's approach has been far from unified.

While the State Department has criticized the credibility of the opposition groups, the Pentagon has a program which gives paramilitary training to Iraqis in exile.

Nevertheless, Washington has repeatedly appealed for more unity within the opposition in exile.

Representatives of some 15 Iraqi groups will gather in Washington on Monday, December 2, to discuss economic issues in a post-Saddam Iraq in a meeting hosted by the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Asian Affairs.

The same 15 groups are also expected to take part in a vast political conference scheduled for mid-December in London to demonstrate to the world the opposition's capacity to take over the reins of power in Iraq.

Those meeting in Washington for the two-day conference Monday are "Iraqi expatriates experienced in the infrastructure and economic situation in Iraq.

Some are affiliated with opposition groups, but certainly not all of them," said a State Department official.

Washington, the official said on the condition of anonymity, does not want to endorse one particular group in luring Saddam's officials to abandon their leader on the promise of a greater role in a post-Saddam government.

"We don't support the formation of an Iraqi government in exile, or a provisional government," the official said.

"We would like to see, in any regime change scenario, that what emerges in Iraq draws from the strength of the Iraqi opposition groups that we help and are working with, but also draws upon the strength and legitimacy of the Iraqi people who are in Iraq right now, and with whom we cannot cooperate because of the existence of a very effective security and intelligence network of the Iraqi government.

"We don't want to disenfranchise any of the Iraqi people that are inside Iraq now by creating a government for them that does not reflect their views," the official added.

The United States recently unveiled a three-step process for forming a post-Saddam regime.

The first step would be a six-month to one-year period during which the U.S. military would act as administrator of the Iraqi government, which therefore excludes an immediate transfer of power to Iraqi dissidents at home or abroad.

The administration would then be given to an international body before finally passing to a new Iraqi government after two years at the earliest.

Meanwhile, Washington has been stepping up its military training of exiled Iraqis.

Hungary and some other unspecified countries have been asked to provide training for some exiled Iraqi opponents who could serve as interpreters or intelligence agents for a potential strike on Iraq, the State Department official said.

In a related development, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz departs this weekend for Ankara, armed with promises of aid, to seek Turkish support for a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials say.

Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who arrive Tuesday, December 3, in Ankara after stops in London and Brussels, will discuss a huge aid package to help persuade Turkish leaders to set aside fears that a war could destabilize the Turkish economy.

A U.S. official said Washington is considering an initial aid package worth between 700 million and 800 million dollars that would rise into billions over a multi-year period.

The Pentagon desperately needs access to bases in Turkey, which borders Iraq in the north, if it is ordered to launch a large scale offensive to unseat Saddam Hussein.

Its preferred option is widely reported to be an air and ground assault on Iraq from the north, the west and the south, but its one that may not be manageable without cooperation from neighboring states.

Wolfowitz's high profile trip to Ankara also is clearly aimed at keeping the pressure on both Baghdad and the United Nations as U.N. arms inspectors embark on a new effort to rid Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Wolfowitz and Grossman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, also will consult NATO allies in London and Brussels.

They must convince Turkey, NATO's only predominantly Muslim member state, that the benefits of aiding Washington outweigh the risks of a war.

U.S. and British air forces use Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to fly combat patrols over northern Iraq to enforce a so-called no-fly zone imposed after the 1991 Gulf War allegedly to protect the region's Kurdish minority.

But Ankara, which benefits from Iraqi oil supplies and cross-border commerce, fears that a war will batter its already fragile economy and overwhelm it with refugees.

It also worries that the Iraqi regime's collapse will give Kurds an opening to establish a state in northern Iraq, threatening the stability of predominantly Kurdish areas in its territory.

"Turkey ... has needs and we are in touch with Turkey as to what their needs might be both in the absence of a conflict -- we support Turkey -- and if there were to be a conflict, how might that affect Turkey," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday, November 28.

"They were seriously affected in a very negative way during the Gulf War and they are sensitive to such a potential problem in the event of a new conflict, as are we," he said in an interview with National Public Radio.

In Baghdad, Ath-Thawra newspaper, mouthpiece of the ruling Baath Party, cautioned that the United States would manipulate U.N. arms experts to its own ends.

"The United States will not suffice with monitoring the work of inspection teams, but will continue its illegitimate interference (in their work) and go on issuing threats to Iraq," wrote Ath-Thawra.

Washington "will poke its nose into the inspectors' mission and will contrive (crises) to derail their work, especially after they, and the whole world, start finding out that Iraq is free of mass destruction weapons" and that the United States has been "lying", the paper charged.

Ath-Thawra said Washington would seek to manipulate the U.N. inspectors or squeeze information out of them, as it did with the experts who left Baghdad four years ago.

The Iraqi foreign ministry, on its part, said field inspections by U.N. experts had uncovered the "lies" of the British government, which claimed two of the sites already inspected had been producing banned weapons.

"The Foot and Mouth Disease Institute and the al-Nasr company were among the sites accused by the report of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in September 2002 of carrying out banned activities," the ministry said.

"But the results that the inspectors reached yesterday reveal the spuriousness of the allegations and lies propagated by Tony Blair," it said in a statement carried by all Iraqi newspapers.

The ministry provided a detailed report of the site visits on Wednesday and Thursday (November 28-29) by experts of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The statement said the teams had been able to freely visit "sites accused by the British and U.S. foreign ministries of carrying out banned activities.

"They held meetings with the (site directors), asked questions, requested explanations ... and received answers."

They also took samples and pictures of the sites, the ministry said.

On Thursday, the inspectors visited a former vaccines laboratory in Al-Dura, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad, suspected of having been rehabilitated to produce biological weapons.

A British government report published amid great fanfare on September 24 referred to the Al-Dura "Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute which produced botulinum toxin and conducted virus research."

U.N. arms experts resumed inspections Wednesday, nearly four years after inspectors from the now defunct U.N. Special Commission fled the country ahead of a U.S.-British bombing blitz.

The 11 UNMOVIC and six IAEA inspectors visited a total of seven sites.

Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 adopted November 8, the teams have unprecedented powers to search suspect sites and question Iraqi scientists about Iraq's alleged arms programs.

Baghdad has strongly denied having any weapons of mass destruction and says the inspectors will find nothing incriminating.

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