WASHINGTON, June 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A U.S. daily claimed Wednesday, June 2, that the selection of Iraq's new interim premier Ayad Allawi followed a rather expensive public relation and lobbying campaign to garner political support in Washington.

The USA Today argued that the 340,000 dollars campaign had influenced the selection process which was sealed by the U.S.-handpicked Governing Council.

"It was a bid for influence, and it was money well spent," Danielle Pletka, a Middle East analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, told the paper.

"Allawi has always assumed, in many ways correctly, that he didn't need a constituency in Iraq as long as he had one in Washington."

According to the paper, the campaign, paid for by a wealthy Iraqi expatriate living in London, was coordinated by the consulting business of Patrick Theros, a former U.S. ambassador to Qatar.

It added that records show the campaigners "engaged in a flurry of contacts on Allawi's behalf beginning in late October. Most were aimed at setting up meetings with influential members of Congress and their staffs, administration officials, think tanks and journalists."

The American daily said the campaign also targeted "officials at the National Security Council, Vice President Cheney's office, the Defense Department, the CIA and three influential Washington think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution."

"The United States ended up Friday with a choice for Prime Minister certain to be seen more as an American candidate than one of the United Nations or the Iraqis themselves," said the mass-circulation.

In a poll by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS) to rank 17 political and religious leaders according to their popularity among fellow citizens, Allawi hit as low as 16, the Time magazine reported Wednesday.

According to another ICRSS poll in September, Allawi had ranked Number 10 out of 25.

This is a clear sign on the slipping of Allawi in Iraqis’ estimation, making it hard to imagine why he was chosen for the post, according to Time.

The magazine attempted to shed some lights on his reported unpopularity among Iraqis.

It quoted the executive director of the ICRSS, Sadoun al-Dulame as saying that every newspaper that reported his appointment "has mentioned his CIA connection."

Allawi has sniped at the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq recently, but his ties to Langley (HQs of the U.S. Intelligence Agency, so infamous among Arabs in general) seem to have registered with Iraqis.

According to the Time, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord is funded by the CIA.

"He's a CIA man, like [Ahmed] Chalabi," Raed Abu Hassan, a Baghdad University political science post-grad. told the Time.

"In this country, CIA connections are political poison."

Other reasons include that the Shiite Allawi was also a former Baathist, and a returning exile as many Iraqis are scornful of politicians who left the country during the Saddam era, according to the magazine.