Iraqi Foes to Receive Aid From Washington

Iraqi Foes to Receive Aid From Washington

NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, Feb. 2, 2001

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has given Iraqi opposition groups permission to use U.S. funds for their activities within Iraq in an effort to undermine the government of President Saddam Hussein, published reports said Friday.

The Washington Post quotes a State Department official as saying the opposition Iraqi National Congress – an umbrella for groups opposed to the Iraqi government – will be allowed to use $4 million set aside by Congress last year for gathering information relating to Iraqi war crimes, military operations and other internal developments.

"We're saying to the INC, you're beyond the organizational phase," the official said. "Now do something."

The London-based dissident group has already used some of the money for logistics and training outside Iraq. The group said through a Washington spokesman that it would be the first time the United States had provided funding for opposition activities inside Iraq since 1996 when the assistance was suspended.

"In that sense, it is a big deal, a pretty substantial departure" in U.S. policy, Francis Brooke told the New York Times. Brooke, the U.S. adviser to the INC, said Bush's decision to allow the INC to draw the fund "portends a more serious approach to the problem" of confronting Hussein.

"We operate in Iraq anyway," Brooke said. "The significance is that we're going to be able to operate inside Iraq with overt American assistance."

The United States had provided covert aid to opposition groups in the years after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But those efforts ended when Hussein's military rolled into the U.S.-protected "safe area" of northern Iraq.

A senior State Department official said that the administration is seeking to develop a policy that combines support for the Iraqi opposition with maintaining the economic sanctions that were imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that the Bush administration intends to hold Iraq to its promise to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction. He said the international community must hold Iraq to its commitment. Iraq promised to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction at the end of the Gulf War.

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