Washington to stop funding Iraqi whose misleading WMD claims hastened war

Washington said yesterday that it was to cease funding the Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, the former exile whose "intelligence reports" and claims about Americans' likely reception among his countrymen helped push the Bush administration to war.

Officials said the Pentagon would stop paying Mr Chalabi's group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), $340,000 (£192,000) a month at the end of June, when the US is due to return sovereignty of Iraq.

Entifadh Qanbar, an INC spokesman in Washington, said: "After 30 June, we expect all funding by US agencies to be ceased because the Iraqi government will be sovereign."

The decision underlines Washington's growing frustration and disillusionment with the INC, which ­ for several years ­ had the ear of the administration as it supported the ousting of Saddam Hussein. The US ­ either through the CIA or the State Department ­ has provided tens of millions of dollars to the INC in exchange for information about Iraq and defectors from the regime.

Although it suited the neo-conservative hawks in the administration to latch on to much of what the INC was saying, most ­ if indeed not all ­ of the predictions it made about the situation America would discover in Iraq have been proved wrong. Last September, a report by the Defence Intelligence Agency said that information from Iraqi defectors made available by the INC was of little or no use and that the individuals invented or exaggerated their claims to have knowledge of the regime's alleged WMD.

Last weekend, General Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said that the CIA had been deliberately misled. "It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading," he said.

The US authorities were not the only ones fed this information. Judith Miller, a reporter with The New York Times, revealed last year that Mr Chalabi was the source of many of her stories about Saddam's alleged weapons programmes. None of the substantive claims that appeared in Ms Miller's stories have proved correct.

Mark Zell, a right-wing Washington lawyer and former Chalabi supporter, recently told the website Salon.Com: "Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat. He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he's got another."

Before the overthrow of Saddam, Mr Chalabi and the then London-based INC were controversial in Washington. Officials at the State Department and the CIA had been suspicious of Mr Chalabi, who has a conviction for fraud, since the mid-90s when his organisation was involved in a failed coup attempt. But he retained influential friends at the Department of Defence where Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser with close links to the administration, was one of his champions.

Reports from Iraq, where Mr Chalabi is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, suggest the US has grown frustrated by efforts to ensure his role in a future Iraqi authority.

When the UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi made clear he did not see a role for Mr Chalabi in the Iraqi body he has been asked to organise, the INC leader accused him of having an "Arab nationalist agenda".

Another thing that has fuelled the anger of Paul Bremer, head of the US authority, are claims that Mr Chalabi has been providing information about America's plans for Iraq to Shi'ite leaders in Iran, with whom he has links.

A recent report in Newsweek quoted a US official as saying some of that information "could get people killed". The claims remain unconfirmed, but the fact that US officials are making them underlines the way Mr Chalabi is now viewed.

Mr Qanbar defended the information the INC provided, saying that the group had provided three defectors who had "interesting information" and that the group never said that it could vouch for them.

"Iraqis working for the INC are risking their lives even now to save US lives in Iraq," he said.

CHALABI'S CLAIMS

Myth: Ahmed Chalabi provided CBS in March 2002 with a "defector", Major Hareeth, who said Saddam Hussein evaded weapons inspectors by using mobile biological-weapons laboratories.

Reality: US government concluded Chalabi's defector was unreliable.

Myth: That there was firm evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida.

Reality: The Defence Intelligence Agency said they could not prove any link with al-Qa'ida.

Myth: Chalabi's "defectors" said Saddam was rebuilding his nuclear weapons programme.

Reality: Officials now acknowledge that the defectors' tales were "shaky" at best.