Chalabi advises US on Iran

[ECH1969]

Chalabi said the need for a new U.S. policy toward Iraq became painfully obvious when the American military recently acknowledged that its efforts to stop sectarian violence involving insurgents and militias in Baghdad had failed.

The coalition has accused Iran of arming insurgents and Shiite militias, but Chalabi, like other officials, believes that the United States should take advantage of Iran's established links with Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians and groups of all kinds in Iraq in an effort to promote its national interests.

He briefly served as Iraq's interim oil minister in 2005 and was a deputy prime minister in 2005-2006. But Chalabi and his INC failed to win a single seat in December 2005 parliamentary elections, and he was not named to a post in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Cabinet.

In addition, Chalabi was convicted in absentia in 1992 by a Jordanian military court of embezzlement, fraud and breach of trust after a bank he ran collapsed with about $300 million in missing deposits. Chalabi, who denies wrongdoing, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in Jordan but has yet to serve a day.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_18524.shtml