"We don’t feel ashamed of having been in touch to liberate Iraq from the evil forces of Saddam," said Allawi

WASHINGTON, June 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ran an organization that carried out a bombing campaign, in collaboration with the U.S. spy agency, in Iraq in the 1990s to topple then President Saddam Hussein, according to a U.S. daily.

The New York Times quoted on Wednesday, June 9, several ex-intelligence officials as saying that Allawi’s group - the Iraqi National Accord - used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq.

"No public records of the bombing campaign exist, and the former officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory.

"They could not even recall exactly when it occurred, though the interviews made it clear it was between 1992 and 1995," said the daily.

The Iraqi government at the time said the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties.

The daily quoted one of the former CIA officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, as recalling that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed."

Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which group might have set off that bomb.

Other former intelligence officials told Times that Allawi's organization was the only group involved in bombings and sabotage at that time.

According to the U.S. paper, several intelligence officials said the CIA's broad goal immediately after the 1991 first Gulf war was to recruit Iraqi opposition leaders who had senior contacts inside Iraq, something Allawi claimed.

"The Iraqi National Accord was made up of former senior Iraqi military and political leaders who had fled the country and were said to retain connections to colleagues inside the government."

"Iyad had contact with people the agency thought would be useful to us in the future," Kenneth Pollack, who was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the CIA during the early 1990's and recalled the sabotage campaign told the daily.

"He seemed to have ties to respected Sunni figures that no one else had."

When Allawi was picked as interim premier, he said his first priority would be to improve the security situation by stopping bombings and other attacks in Iraq, an idea several former officials familiar with his past told the Times sounded "ironic."

"Send a thief to catch a thief," said Pollack.

According to the daily, Allawi declined to respond to repeated requests for comment, made Monday and Tuesday through his Washington representative, Patrick N. Theros.

The former intelligence officials, while confirming CIA involvement in the bombing campaign, would not say how, exactly, the agency had supported it.

Not Ashamed

Allawi said Wednesday he was not ashamed of having worked with the CIA and other intelligence agencies as head of an exiled group trying to destabilize Saddam’s regime.

"I was the head of a political organization in touch with at least 15 intelligence services across the world and in the region," Allawi said after a cabinet meeting, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"We don’t feel ashamed of having been in touch to liberate Iraq from the evil forces of Saddam."

While avoiding any direct comment on the reported bombings, Allawi said he had actively worked to shake the former regime.