US forms Iraqi opposition army

[Unrepresented]

A 5,000-man force is being recruited, fueling more feuding among Iraqi opposition groups.

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SULEIMANIYEH AND ARBIL, NORTHERN IRAQ – With promises of $3,000 and a trip to America, the US is quietly recruiting - inside northern Iraq - part of a new 5,000-man force to help topple Saddam Hussein.
But Iraqi opposition leaders here say that the US is creating a military force for the controversial Iraqi National Congress (INC), which has little support in Iraq. It is one of six opposition groups that Washington is encouraging to come up with a plan for ruling a post-Hussein Iraq.

Iraq's squabbling opposition groups have already put off until mid-December a key meeting in Brussels meant to have started tomorrow. This behind-the-scenes US drive - which may also include a separate US intelligence effort to recruit agents across Iraq - is exacerbating the infighting between the Iraqi groups.

"The US should enter into partnership with the real freedom fighters of Iraq, the people with a real constituency," says Barham Salih, the prime minister of one of two main armed Kurdish groups that control northern Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "Mercenaries will not do the job."

In early October, President Bush signed a presidential directive authorizing the combat training, and approved the use of $92 million remaining from the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act to create a force of local scouts, interpreters, forward spotters to call in laser-guided bombs, and even

guards for prisoner-of-war camps. Most of those recruited for the new army so far are being drawn from Iraqi exiles living abroad, from lists supplied by the INC, but some fresh recruiting is now taking place here in northern Iraq.....

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