U.S. cuts funding for Iraqi opposition group

The United States has been working with the Iraqi National Congress to unseat Saddam Hussein.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States has suspended funding for the top Iraqi opposition group, citing financial concerns about the management and use of the federal aid, a State Department official said Saturday.

The decision followed a recent audit of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, by the State Department's Office of the Inspector General.

"The OIG instructed the State Department to withhold or restrict future funding of the INC Support Foundation until the adequate and transparent financial controls in place," the official statement said.

In a foreign operations bill passed in 2000, Congress authorized more than $25 million in funding for the London-based Iraqi opposition organization. Despite Saturday's action, the State Department says it did give the INC $500,000 to cover its institutional operating expenses for January.

Established in 1992 in Vienna, Austria, the Iraqi National Congress supports humanitarian efforts in Iraq while also enlisting the support of foreign governments to topple the Middle Eastern country's leader, Saddam Hussein.

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Sharif Ali Bin AlHussein, a spokesman for the group, called the State Department's move premature and said the group will meet a January 15 deadline to institute specific financial controls, according to The Associated Press.

Some U.S. State Department officials, he said, "want to appease Saddam. They want to contain him and keep him in his box and don't want to take Saddam on as the head of a terrorist state," the AP reported.

Talk of U.S. support for Iraq, and opposition to Hussein, has increased after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. U.S. and Czech officials have linked Iraq to members of al Qaeda, the group accused of masterminding the attacks, amid reports that Iraq has manufactured chemical and biological weapons.

U.S., British and allied aircraft currently patrol "no fly zones" in southern and northern Iraq, a consequence of the 1991 war against Iraq for its invasion on neighboring Kuwait. The United Nations has imposed widespread sanctions against Iraq for the past decade, measures Hussein blames for the deaths of millions of Iraqis.