Chalabi Makes Capital Rounds

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi denied Wednesday that he deliberately provided the United States with faulty intelligence to strengthen the case for invading Iraq, calling such accusations “an urban myth.”

Chalabi’s comments to reporters came after he met with Bush administration officials and delivered a speech at a conservative think tank in Washington on his vision for Iraq’s political future.

Chalabi also denied accusations that he had passed U.S. security secrets to Iran and said he knew nothing about an FBI investigation into the allegations.

“I have no knowledge of any investigation about me,” he said. “I did not pass any information to Iran or compromise the security of the United States. I did not pass any codes to Iran.”

Earlier, he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and President Bush’s national security advisor, Stephen J. Hadley.

On Friday, he is scheduled to address the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He will return to Washington for a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday.

Today, he is expected to meet privately with members of the House Government Reform Committee to discuss issues such as the problem-plagued reconstruction effort in Iraq.

Many Democrats and critics of the White House’s leadership of the war in Iraq were dismayed that Chalabi was making the rounds of administration figures without having to confront questions from Congress about whether he knowingly made faulty claims about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime and whether he passed secrets to Iran.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, said Chalabi’s private appearance today on Capitol Hill should be public, and that he should be put under oath “to answer questions about his role in providing false intelligence to the United States.”

Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales asking whether the FBI planned to interview the Iraqi politician while he was in the United States.

“If not, why not?” the senators asked in their letter.

Asked by a reporter about such comments, Chalabi said he would be “prepared to go to the Senate and respond to questions.”

Chalabi was once the favorite of some Pentagon officials to lead Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion and the fall of Hussein, but he gradually fell out of the administration’s favor. First came charges that he provided flawed intelligence that said Hussein was closing in on the ability to build nuclear weapons; that claim was proved wrong.

Later, some administration officials suspected Chalabi had tipped off Iran that the U.S. had broken the country’s intelligence messaging codes. About a year ago, U.S. military units raided his home in Iraq.

As he entered the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research to deliver his speech Wednesday, a small but vocal group of protesters carried a large banner reading: “Chalabi Lied, Innocents Died.”

“This gentleman played a key role in some of the fraudulent claims that led us to war, and a lot of people are angry that he’s being treated like a visiting dignitary and being feted,” said David Swanson, who helped organize the protest.

Dressed in a dark suit and a rose-colored tie, the Iraqi deputy premier looked unfazed by the controversy swirling around him.

Those who have followed Chalabi’s career say his appeal to some U.S. officials has been based, at least partly, on his ability to tell them what they want to hear, and he did not disappoint in his speech to a largely friendly audience.

He presented himself as a moderate Shiite Muslim politician eager to reach out to Sunni Muslims to build a united, politically moderate nation.

“Iraq is on the threshold of a new era, but we are not yet out of danger,” he said.

Chalabi has cast himself as a possible candidate for prime minister after Iraq’s National Assembly elections in December. But political commentators in Iraq say Chalabi’s chances of winning the office are slim.

One respected pollster in Baghdad, who asked not to be identified for reasons of personal security, said Chalabi’s popularity had been falling in the last year because he had been such a high-profile member of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari’s government, which many Iraqis consider incompetent.

Bush administration officials played down Chalabi’s meetings Wednesday. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli described Chalabi’s session with Rice as one of many such meetings she had held with a diverse group of Iraqi government officials.

“It was a good meeting,” Ereli told reporters. “They had a wide-ranging discussion over a full range of issues regarding Iraq.”

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Times staff writers John Daniszewski in Baghdad and Warren Vieth in Washington contributed to this report.