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From
Asharq Al-Awsat, no. 8931, London
INC Spokesman: More
documentation against Al Jazeera Iraqi intelligence paid monthly cash to Arab
journalists.
Kamal Qubeisy
12 May 2003
A London spokesman for
the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, admitted to Asharq Al-Awsat
that the INC had provided Sunday Times journalist in Baghdad, Mary Colvin, with
documents that that paper had published about Iraqi Intelligence infiltration
into the Qatari satellite channel. He further said that the Times had only published
a small part of the documents on the relations between the channel and the Saddam
Hussein regime that the Congress had come across.
The spokesman, who asked
that his name not be revealed, confirmed the truth of the small item published
a week ago by Asharq Al-Awsat on a dispute between the INC and the station after
Al Jazeera broadcast a false report about the arrest by American forces of Ahmed
Chalabi in Baghdad, which it withdrew two hours later.
"I myself made a call
from London to a responsible party at the station. When I did not find him in
his office, I left a message for him to call me immediately, telling him that
we have documents that clearly implicate Al Jazeera. When he called, I advised
him of the existence of documents with people working with the INC in Baghdad
which uncover an unnatural relationship with the Iraqi intelligence services and
the Ministry of Information through some of its employees. He hesitated for a
minute, and then proposed a meeting between the station and the INC to hand over
the papers or for the INC to promise not to publish them. My answer was immediate,
and I refused any sort of bargain."
The spokesman mentioned
that of the twenty-five tons of documents, found in several places by people working
with the INC, only a few had to do with the Qatari satellite station. The rest
were documents dealing with the General Intelligence Services; the Special Security
Agency; and the Ministries of Information, Interior, and Defence; along with the
Postal Archives; and the Department of Ceremonials and Awards. All of these were
being kept in a secret place in the Iraqi capital, according to the spokesman.
He also said that what
had not been published yet were even more serious documents showing the pro-Baath
and pro-Saddam bias of Al Jazeera workers, editors, directors, and even the station
authorities, expressed in letters and meetings and documented in reports of the
Iraqi intelligence services, which INC have come into possession of.
The spokesman disclosed
that among the things found at the Ministry of Information and the offices of
the Iraqi intelligence services was that various Arab media in the Middle East
and Europe were receiving large sums of money regularly. These were being paid
to newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations in Cairo, Amman, London,
and Paris. He added that more than thirty editors and directors working in various
media were receiving stipends of between two and five thousand dollars per month
to cooperate with Iraqi intelligence outside of the country or to reflect the
Iraqi point of view in their articles and news analyses, or even to follow the
directives of the regime in putting forward what it wanted to say.
The spokesman said that
the INC had come across correspondence and copies of official invitations sent
by the Ministry of Information to Arab journalists who had come to Baghdad through
other Arab countries without an entry stamp on their passports since they were
making these visits, sometimes without the knowledge of the media organizations
they worked for. According to the spokesman, the INC would at an appropriate time
unveil the names of the newspapers that claimed to be advocating the Arab cause
when they actually were exploiting Iraqi interests using journalistic weapons.
The spokesman did not
confirm what was told to Asharq Al-Awsat by telephone yesterday by a member of
the Iraqi opposition, who had been living in Washington so as to be close State
Department officials, but who now had been in Baghdad for two weeks, that the
Amir of Qatar Hamed bin Khalifa Al Thani himself intervened with President Bush
on a visit last week about the documents about Al Jazeera in the possession of
the INC, requesting the American to urge INC not to publish or leak the documents.
So the INC hurried to leak the story to the Sunday Times, and more like it will
appear in other papers.
ENDS
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