US forms Iraqi opposition army

And KDP Prime Minister Nechrivan Barzani warns that any new force will create "tension" in the opposition. "Who is this being organized for? We assume it is for Ahmed Chalabi," he says, adding that it would be "impossible" for the INC leader to find 5,000 followers without paying for them.

"We think it is very dangerous, because we view that [force] as the nucleus for a new civil war in the future," Mr. Barzani says.

"There are sufficient armed men in Iraq already - we don't need anymore."

Though Mr. Chalabi "deserves to play a role," Mr. Hariri says, "Iraq is not Afghanistan, and there is no room for warlords - especially imported ones."

Most of Nouri's recruits so far are from northern Iraq, and from Iraq's minority Sunni Arab population, though he says his organization, the Kurdistan Democratic Movement, is able to recruit from across Iraq. Mr. Hussein is from the Sunni Muslim Arab minority, which - unlike the Kurds in the north, and Shia Muslim Arabs in the south - has no armed opposition forces of its own.

For that reason, having such a force play a role in any US invasion may appeal to American war planners.

"It's a reasonable thing to do, because Arabs aren't going to join Kurdish forces, and Kurds won't train outside Iraq," says Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador who has spent years working on northern Iraq issues, now at the National War College in Washington.

"The State Department should be careful about belittling Chalabi - he ought to have a role," says Mr. Galbraith. "Dismissing him as a Savile Row revolutionary is not fair. It's easy to dismiss a bunch of guys who go around Washington with tin cups and pontificating."

Even some of Chalabi's sternest critics say he should receive credit for keeping Iraq opposition issues alive in Congress during the 1990s.

But Chalabi also has a colorful past that is coloring the present. He is wanted in Jordan for allegedly embezzling from a bank that he ran, and played a key role in a CIA operation in northern Iraq in the 1990s that went bust. State Department funding for the INC was cut off for a time this year, amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement.

"Chalabi has no military on the ground, so how can he tell America 'I have 1,000 fighters'? So he comes here to get them," says a senior Kurdish security official. "But these people are collected from the street - they're not fighters."

The Iraqi infighting is taking place as the US is moving its own CIA assets into Iraq. The Washington Post reported last week that "two teams of eight CIA agents each, with interpreters, were recently inserted secretly" into KDP and PUK territory. It said that Vice President Dick Cheney "reportedly exploded" when he found that State and the CIA had blocked funding for a $4 million intelligence gathering operation inside Iraq by dissidents.

Former communist chief Nouri could be recruiting for some similar operation. The clock on his office wall ticks away, inexplicably two hours and ten minutes fast. He speaks about how the force he is helping to build will be the kernel for a new, national army, drawn from all of Iraq's ethnic groups to minimize revenge attacks and street fighting in a post-Saddam world.

But even Nouri is not entirely pleased with the recruiting effort.

"We should send people who are capable, and believe in it, but some of those who were collected - maybe they won't be good for this mission," says Nouri. "The way it has been done, so rushed, means some people were not suitable. Some of those, you look at them, and you can see that they can't be trained."

Nouri denies that he's recruiting directly for Chalabi's INC, saying that he uses "different channels." His first group of recruits was kept at a hotel in KDP territory for several days, at KDP expense, before moving to the town of Zakho and crossing into Turkey. He says he is waiting for a call to send the second batch.

"This is not Chalabi's army," Nouri says. "This army is a power base for America - if they want Ahmed Chalabi to be a powerful man, or someone else, I don't know.

"My goal is to change the regime, and America is doing that," Nouri says. "They are trying to do a good job in Iraq, and we should clasp hands and join with them."

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