Gore: Saddam must go

Saddam Hussein: Indictment for war crimes?

By Jeff Phillips in Washington

US Vice-President Al Gore has told Iraqi opposition politicians that the United States remains committed to the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.

There can be no peace for the Middle East so long as Saddam is in a position to brutalise his people and threaten his neighbours

Al Gore

Meeting a delegation from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), he also reiterated the administration's view that the Iraqi leader should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Clinton administration is trying to beef up the INC after nearly 10 years of sanctions on Iraq have brought the world no closer to bringing down the Iraqi leader.

It has allocated $8m this year to the INC to help to re-build the organisation.

Vote winner

The INC will also be given some money to provide for the welfare of refugees and displaced Iraqis.

More than $250,000 has already been handed over.

Although the government has sometimes been reluctant in the past to spell out its direct support for a campaign to overthrow the Iraqi leader, a strategy that would topple him without the involvement of American troops has strong support in the US Congress.

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In a presidential election year, President Clinton, and more to the point, presidential candidate Mr Gore, might also find it useful to demonstrate rather more determination to change things in Iraq than he has in the past.

The INC's nine-man delegation was led by its president, Ahmed Chalabi, and included representatives of the two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

However, a key group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was absent from the meeting.

$97m support

The SCIRI represents Iraq's Shi'ite community and is the only organisation currently militarily active against the Baghdad government.

Taking American money and other material backing will undermine our support among Iraqis and in the Arab states

Hamid al-Bayyati, SCIRI

SCIRI and a number of Islamic groups have been boycotting the INC since April 1999 in protest at its agreement to accept US financial and material support.

Hamid al-Bayyati, SCIRI's representative in London, said: "Taking American money and other material backing will undermine our support among Iraqis and in the Arab states."

Nevertheless, the administration has also allocated a further $97m worth of material support for the INC, to be provided by the Department of Defense for training in, amongst other things, computers, logistics, field medicine and communications and web site design and broadcasting.

The INC wants oil revenues diverted to the people

Meanwhile, the INC has urged the administration to speed up the contract-approval process for sending medicines, spare parts and humanitarian supplies into Iraq and to find a means of diverting oil revenues away from the regime and into the hands of the Iraqi people.

The State Department says that it regards the INC as a "representative and authoritative voice for the people of Iraq".

It expects whatever new regime replaces the current one to emerge "very much from within Iraq".

And it is clear that the INC is being prepared to take on this responsibility and to act as a legitimising counterpart to whatever emerges, presumably from among disaffected military officers in Baghdad.