BAGHDAD,
August 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Casting new doubts on
who really stands behind the bombing of the U.N. office in Baghdad and
benefits from such an attack, a member of the U.S.-handpicked interim
Governing Council said Wednesday, August 20, they had received
intelligence on August 14 that a truck bombing was imminent in the
capital said shared it with U.S. intelligence agents.
Ahmad
Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and a known favorite of the
U.S. Defense Department, asserted that the said intelligence
"specifically said that a large-scale act would take place ...
against a soft target, such as Iraqi political parties or other parties,
including the U.N."
He
also maintained that according to the information available, neither the
ruling "Coalition Provisional Authority" nor
"coalition" troops would be targeted.
Chalabi
added that the intelligence had warned the attack would be a truck
bombing, using either a kamikaze driver or a remote-control detonator,
but declined to disclose the source of his information or how it was
collected, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
However,
it was not clear if the information had been relayed to the United
Nations.
At
U.N. headquarters in New York, Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for Secretary
General Kofi Annan, said he was unaware that any such intelligence had
been passed along.
"To
my knowledge, that information was not relayed to the United Nations,
but I can't say that with 100 percent certainty," he said.
Chalabi
claimed that "meetings had taken place between former members of
the regime and extremists" ahead of Tuesday's attack on the U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad killed at least 17 people, including the world
body's top envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
"Security
Problem"
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"We
had hoped that by now the coalition forces would have secured the
environment for us to be able to carry on the essential
work," Annan said
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In
a related development, Annan chided the U.S.-led occupation power in
Iraq holding it "responsible for law and order and the security of
the country."
"We
had hoped that by now the coalition forces would have secured the
environment for us to be able to carry on the essential work of
political and economic reconstruction, institution-building and for
Iraqis to carry on with their work.
"That
has not happened," said the U.N. chief during a stopover in
Stockholm on his way to meet the U.N. Security Council in New York later
in the day.
Protecting
U.N. staff in Iraq has been a topic of longstanding dispute between the
occupying power and the United Nations, which until recently has been
limited to a fringe role in Iraq.
U.S.
administrative of Iraq Paul argued, however, that the world body
"had its own security people on that site there. They were
responsible for that site, as indeed most of the foreign missions here
(in Iraq) have their own security on their sites," he told CNN.
"We,
of course, share the secretary general's concern that the sooner this
kind of thing can be stopped, the better," he added.
"And
we are certainly not going to slacken off our efforts to restore full
security to Iraq," Bremer said, admitting having "a security
problem" in Iraq.
"The
security problem now has got a terrorist dimension which is new, but the
rest of the security is basically in better shape than it was three
months ago, when I arrived here," he claimed.
