WASHINGTON — Despite repeated vows by President Bush to force Saddam Hussein from power, Bush administration officials are still at odds over which Iraqi opposition groups the United States should support, U.S. officials and Iraqi opposition leaders say.
Administration officials generally say that U.S. military action would be needed to oust Saddam and that Washington could not count on a coup in Iraq to do the job.
But the question of which Iraqi insurgents to back is a critical issue because the United States wants to avoid a power vacuum in Baghdad after any U.S.-led military campaign to topple the Iraqi leader.
Iraqi insurgents would be expected to play an important role in any U.S. military strategy, since they could provide a base for U.S. military operations, help identify targets, conduct sabotage against the Saddam government and perhaps carry out broader attacks.
But as planning for a possible military campaign proceeds, the State Department, Pentagon and CIA remain divided over which insurgents to back.
The issue came to the forefront recently when the State Department sought to arrange a conference of Iraqi opposition leaders that would have given only a limited role to the leadership of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of opposition groups that is headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a former banker whose headquarters are in London.
At the heart of the debate are the starkly different assessments within the Bush administration about the groups.
The Iraqi National Congress has argued that an Afghan-style military campaign involving heavy U.S. airstrikes, but only modest U.S. ground forces, can work in Iraq and insists it is willing to carry out operations, which is music to the ears of civilians in the Defense Department.
Perle, who heads the advisory Defense Policy Board, says that the group should be supported because its platform calls for a democratic Iraq, an end to Iraqi efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and a constructive policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Perle contends that the failure to stir up opposition to Saddam in past years is not a result of the group's shortcomings but of halfhearted U.S. support.
The CIA, however, has viewed the group as ineffectual while the State Department has sought to establish ties with a broader array of groups. The dispute over the conference began in February, when the State Department approached the Middle East Institute, a private group headed by Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. David Mack, the vice president of the institute and a former senior State Department official, was asked to develop a proposal for a conference .
The plan he presented called for a conference of Iraqi opposition leaders to be held this summer in Europe. The idea, Mack said, was not to set up a formal government in exile but to "lay the building blocks for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq." The State Department earmarked $5 million for the project.
As Mack set about organizing the conference, it was clear that the leadership of the Iraqi National Congress was not to play a dominant role. In preparation for the conference, a small group of Iraqi opposition leaders were invited to a planning session in Washington.
Soon, however, the Bush administration discovered that the plan for the conference had a glaring, political vulnerability. Walker, of the Middle East Institute, had criticized Bush's "Axis of Evil" statements .
Yielding to the complaints, the State Department informed the Middle East Institute recently that it was no longer going to hold the conference.