US electoral interference in Iraq alleged

BAGHDAD - United States President George W Bush authorised covert intervention in Iraq's January elections by using behind-the-scenes operatives, in an effort to engineer an Iraqi government allied to the US and not dominated by Shia parties, according to an article in the New Yorker today.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes that the White House secretly tried to influence the elections by undertaking operations "off the books".

This was after the President had been frustrated in his support for a CIA operation to spend money on political candidates anywhere in the world who were seeking to spread democracy.

In practice this would have allowed the CIA to give financial aid to the candidacy of Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi Prime Minister, appointed by the US in June 2004. The plan was dropped because of the opposition of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader.

The US was compelled to agree to an open election in Iraq after it became apparent in the autumn of 2003 that direct rule by Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, had provoked a vicious and escalating guerrilla war.

In conflict with the Sunni Arabs, Washington could not afford also to alienate the Shia or their religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The Shia leaders wanted an election because their community, long politically marginalised in Iraq, is 60 per cent of the population.

But ever since the first Gulf war in 1991 the US had been worried about opening the door to Shia religious parties or parties friendly with Iran to take power in Iraq.

This was a prime reason why the US did not overthrow Saddam Hussein after defeating his army in Kuwait.

Washington was happy with its choice of Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia businessman whose Iraqi National Accord group had long been supported by the CIA, as interim Prime Minister.

It wanted him to do well enough in the election to stay as prime minister.

The Kurds, suspicious of the Shia parties, would also have preferred Mr Allawi to stay in power.

Mr Hersh quotes a high-ranking UN official as saying: "The American embassy's aim was to make sure that Allawi remained as Prime Minister, and they tried to do it through manipulation of the system ...

[But] the Shiites rigged the election in the south as much as ballots were rigged for Allawi."

Mr Allawi clearly had money to spend during the election and it was assumed, though without any proof in Iraq, that this ultimately came from the US.

He was constantly on government controlled television stations.

The main Shia coalition, with the blessing of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, was able to triumph, though not by quite as much as expected.

- INDEPENDENT