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LONDON: An amateurish hostage taking at Iraq’s embassy in Berlin has embarrassed Saddam Hussein’s main opponents just as they were beginning to win US support for their blueprint for a new regime in Baghdad.
The umbrella Iraqi National Congress may have sympathized with the cause of the little-known attackers who took Iraqi diplomats hostage for six hours on Tuesday to demand Saddam’s ouster.
But the congress quickly distanced itself from a siege that threatened its quest for legitimacy in the West.
“This happened at the wrong time. The opposition has managed to take its message of an enlightened and democratic Iraq to the United States and to Arab countries whose governments do not want to hear about such things,” said an opposition member.
“The United States appears to be finally adopting the opposition’s programme instead of excluding them from the fight to remove Saddam,” he added.
After years of dismissing the opposition as ineffective, US officials met six exiled Iraqi leaders in Washington two weeks ago.
They appeared to agree on a manifesto drawn up by the Iraqi National Congress that calls for the creation of a democratic and federal Iraq after Saddam’s ouster.
OUST SADDAM: Until the meeting, Washington had not made clear what sort of regime would replace Saddam, accused by President George W. Bush of seeking weapons of mass destruction. Bush has vowed to oust Saddam, but says he has not yet decided to use military force.
The hostage takers in Berlin said their choice of target was partly motivated by Germany’s opposition to an attack on Iraq.
The siege ended without bloodshed after German police stormed the Iraqi embassy. Five hostage-takers were detained and two hostages were released unharmed.
German intelligence officials said they had never heard of the group calling itself the Democratic Iraqi Opposition of Germany.
The congress, set up by former banker Ahmad Chalabi in 1992, said it did not recognize the hostage takers, but contacted them to try to end the siege.
“We confine our war of liberation to Iraq proper. We do not condone such violence,” said a congress spokesman.
The congress groups the main factions opposed to Saddam, including two Kurdish parties in northern Iraq, former Iraqi army officers, businessmen and intellectuals.
DECADE OF LOBBYING: The congress manifesto, adopted in 1992, calls for a transitional government to take power after Saddam and for a federal constitution that would be ratified at a referendum.
Though divided over ideology and personality, the Iraqi opposition is united in its goal of a federal and democratic state. Washington has now warmed to the idea after more than a decade of lobbying.
“Tell the people of Iraq that the United States will not send its troops to war to replace Saddam by another military dictatorship,” the Iraqi exiles quoted Vice President Dick Cheney as saying after their meeting.
The 1998 Iraq Liberation Act of the United States authorizes the president to fund Iraqi opposition groups and to promote a democratic government to replace Saddam’s regime.
Most of the funding has gone to the groups within the congress, but they are not Saddam’s only opponents.
The Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq has 3,000 fighters near Iraq’s border with Iran.
The council also sent a senior representative to the Washington meeting. It wants a government with Islamic credentials to replace Saddam, but not an Islamic republic.
The Kurds also have 40,000-strong militias that control parts of northern Iraq, protected by a no-fly zone patrolled by Western warplanes.—Reuters
