U.S. Expels Journalist Covering U.N. for Iraq

The United States has ordered the U.N. correspondent for the state-run Iraqi News Agency to leave the country, charging that he was “engaging in activities considered to be harmful to the security of the United States,” U.S. and Iraqi officials said Friday.

Baghdad quickly responded by ordering Fox News correspondents out of Iraq.

The journalist, Mohammed Allawi, 38, has been the INA correspondent at the United Nations for two years. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and five children but must leave the United States within 15 days, according to the expulsion order. Allawi, a favorite of the U.N. press corps, denied that he was acting against the United States and said he had no idea why he was asked to leave. He said he wouldn’t fight the order, even though he may be returning with his family to Iraq on the eve of war.

“What can I do?” he said. “I am just a journalist.”

A U.S. official said that Allawi had been under surveillance and was caught in “activities harmful to U.S. interests. He abused his privilege of residence and engaged in acts outside those of a correspondent.” The expulsion order came at the behest of the U.S. mission to the U.N.

Allawi said a U.S. diplomat had approached him about two months ago “to discuss the Iraqi issue,” but Allawi refused, fearing that it was an attempt to lure him to defect. Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Douri, defended Allawi and said that he was a victim of U.S. harassment. Douri complained that U.S. officials frequently contact diplomats and staff in the Iraqi mission to ask them to defect or help gather intelligence.

“This kind of harassment happens on a daily basis,” Douri said Friday. “Yesterday it happened twice” to Iraqi diplomats.

Sometimes it works. In the summer of 2001, Iraq’s No. 2 and No. 3 diplomats defected to the U.S. after their tours of duty at the U.N. ended.

Iraqi diplomats have complained that U.S. intelligence agents targeted two top Iraqi scientists and a senior advisor to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during their visits to the U.N. in May last year for talks about resuming arms inspections. Iraqi officials said the agents contacted the scientists at their hotels and offered them cash.

Allawi is the second Iraqi expelled in the last year from New York but the first Iraqi journalist to be asked to leave. In June 2002, the United States expelled Abdul Rahman I.K. Saad, the first secretary at Iraq’s U.N. mission, accusing him of “activities incompatible with his diplomatic status.”

Fox News said it would meet with Iraqi officials to appeal its expulsion.