American troops and Iraqi police raid leader's home

10.30am - By ANDREW BUNCOMBE in Washington


Just days after it was announced his funding was being cut, American troops and Iraqi police yesterday raided the home and offices of Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi in what he described as an effort to silence his criticism of the US.

More than 100 Iraqi and American personnel, believed to include CIA officers, were involved in the raids which were said to be part of an investigation into "fraud, kidnapping and associated matters".

A spokesman for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) insisted that neither Mr Chalabi or the group he leads, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), were the targets of the investigation.

"My house was attacked. We avoided by a hair's breadth a clash with my guards," Mr Chalabi said afterwards at a news conference in Baghdad.

"I am America's best friend in Iraq. If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."

Whether or not the coalition's claim that the INC was not the target proves true, the raid underlines the sea change that has occurred in Mr Chalabi's relationship with Washington.

Little more than a year ago the former Iraqi exile - a Shiia and an outspoken proponent of the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein - was touted by some in the Bush administration as the possible future leader of a independent but US-friendly Iraq. His group has been provided with tens of millions of dollars in recent years. But things have changed.

Mr Chalabi's intelligence reports about Saddam's development of weapons of mass destruction have proved not to the true - as has the warm welcome he predicted US troops would receive from his countrymen.

With Washington now having decided to drop its backing for Mr Chalabi and to distance itself from him, he is trying to independently lever himself into a position of influence, using his position as a member of the Iraqi Governing Council body, which will be replaced on June 30 by a new body currently being drawn up by UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.

Mr Chalabi has been told he will have no position in that body and instead he has been busily trying to win support from other Shiia members the council and broaden his support among Iraq's Shiia majority population. One report yesterday suggested that Mr Chalabi was, in effect, preparing for a coup after the US handed over sovereignty.

Mr Chalabi claimed the raids had been motivated by his recent criticism of the US. Earlier this week the US confirmed that monthly payments to the INC of $335,000 would be stopped at the end of June.

"I am now calling for policies to liberate the Iraqi people, to get full sovereignty now and I am pushing the gate in a way they don't like," he said.

"I have opened up the investigation of the oil-for-food programme which has cast doubt about the integrity of the UN here, which they don't like."

He said that Americans in civilian clothes arrived in Humvees and accompanied the Iraqi police. The police entered the party's office, and his home, which is in the same building, seizing computer equipment, files, papers, a Koran and prayer beads, he said Dan Senor, a spokesman for the CPA, referred all questions about the raid to the Iraqi authorities.

"It as an Iraqi-led investigation, it was an Iraqi-led raid. It was the result of Iraqi arrest warrants," he said.

But a British adviser to Mr Chalabi said the raid carried the hallmarks of the involvement of Paul Bremer, head of the CPA.

Claude Hankes-Drielsma said: "The way he has been behaving the governing council...this is very much in the style of Bremer's bully-boy tactics."

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Herald Feature: Iraq