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US general accuses Iraqi politicians of links to Iran

17 February 2010 04:28 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The US commander in Iraq on Tuesday accused two Iraqi politicians at the center of a dispute over blacklisting electoral candidates of having ties to an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, APA reports citing AFP.

General Ray Odierno said Ali al-Allami and Ahmed Chalabi "clearly are influenced by Iran." "We have direct intelligence that tells us that," the commander told an audience at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

Allami heads a committee responsible for ensuring that individuals with links to executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s Baath party are barred from standing in next month’s elections in Iraq.

Chalabi also sits on the committee and has fallen out of favor with Washington after intelligence he provided to back the US case for the Iraq war turned out to be flawed.
The dispute over who can stand in the March 7 general election has raised sectarian tensions in Iraq and alarmed Washington, which views the polls as a crucial precursor to a complete military withdrawal by the end of 2011.

The vote is seen as a test of reconciliation efforts between the population’s Sunni minority dominant under Saddam and the Shiite majority now represented by the current government led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "We still uncover Iranian rockets and other goods that are made and individuals who are trained in Iran to conduct attacks against both US and Iraqi security forces, I want to emphasize," he said.

Iran’s militant activity has been "consistent" but it is "lower than it’s been" in the past, he said. President Barack Obama has vowed to withdraw US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 and to scale back the force to 50,000 by August when American combat soldiers are due to pull out.

Odierno said he would weigh the pace of US drawdown plans based on the aftermath of the election.

"I’ve always said about 60 days following the elections is when we really need to do an evaluation to determine what security will look like."