BAGHDAD, Iraq – A Shiite power broker reviled by Sunni Arabs for his ties to Iran and a militia linked to sectarian violence will ask President Bush to seek Iran's help in their upcoming White House meeting and try to allay U.S. concerns over Iranian influence in Iraq.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who is due to meet with Bush tomorrow, yesterday dismissed speculation that his trip to the United States threatened the authority of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who came under criticism for meeting with Bush last week in Jordan.
“This trip to Washington was planned a long time ago and has nothing to do with the meetings that took place in Amman,” al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, Iraq's largest Shiite party, told reporters in Amman, Jordan, before his departure.
Al-Hakim is arguably the most powerful Shiite politician in Iraq, but he prefers to work behind the scenes. He wanted a close SCIRI associate, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, to be prime minister after elections in December, but grudgingly accepted al-Maliki as a compromise. The two men have since maintained a public image of cooperation to safeguard the ruling coalition.
Speculation in Iraq that al-Hakim was emerging as a rival for Washington's attention was fueled in part by an internal White House memo that questioned al-Maliki's authority and his ability to handle Iraq's worsening security.
Written by National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley after he met al-Maliki in Baghdad, the memo also spoke of the need for the Iraqi leader to end his alliance with the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia, the Mahdi army, is blamed for much of Iraq's sectarian violence.
The timing of al-Hakim's meeting with Bush raised the possibility that Washington also may be looking for additional sources of help as it tries to stabilize Iraq, allowing a drawdown on U.S. forces to begin.
Bush's pledges of support for al-Maliki and his meeting tomorrow with al-Hakim coincide with a debate within the administration on whether to abandon efforts to persuade Sunni Arabs to halt their insurgency and instead leave that task to the Shiites and Kurds, according to U.S. officials familiar with the re-evaluation process.
Two al-Maliki aides and a third close to al-Hakim said the prime minister and the SCIRI leader had discussed the White House visit. The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for disclosing confidential information, said al-Hakim was expected to try to persuade Bush to enlist Iran's help in quelling violence in Iraq. In return, they said, al-Hakim would pledge not to allow Iran to use him to promote its own interests, said by analysts to be “controlled chaos” that keeps the United States preoccupied with Iraq.
Al-Hakim has close links with Shiite Iran, where he lived in exile for years before he returned to Iraq after the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime. His Badr Brigade militia, trained and armed by the Iranians, is blamed for some of Iraq's sectarian violence.
Badr, however, has mostly stayed out of the limelight, leaving the focus on another Shiite militia, the less disciplined and less secretive Mahdi army.
Al-Hakim's militia links and close ties to Iran, however, have gone unmentioned by Washington, perhaps in recognition of his political leverage.
