IRAQ: WHITE HOUSE BLOCKS FUNDS TO BOOST OPPOSITION.(Brief Article)

IPR Strategic Business Information Database, May, 2002

"Washington Post" columnist Jim Hoagland, writing in the "International Herald Tribune" on 6 May, reported that the White House had blocked a bid by the U.S. State Department to funnel $5 million to the Middle East Institute, a Washington think-tank, for a project to promote anti-Saddam Iraqi groups.

The money was intended to fund a series of conferences. The State Department had apparently failed to notice that Ned Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.A.E., Egypt, and Israel, as well as a former assistant secretary of state for the Near East, had publicly scorned President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" metaphor as "ridiculous." Hoagland noted that the Middle East Institute receives funds from Saudi Arabia, which opposes the opposition Iraq National...

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