Iraq's Al-Hakim Gets White House Meeting

President Bush, right, meets with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, an Iraqi Shiite leader, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Dec. 4, 2006. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (Pablo Martinez Monsivais - AP)

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim is closer to Iran than any other Iraqi politician and runs a Shiite militia blamed for sectarian violence in Iraq.

So why did President Bush meet him in the White House?

Some Iraqi officials believe Bush wanted to find out what role Iran can play in bringing peace to this country. If anyone in Iraq knows, it is the 55-year-old al-Hakim.

Al-Hakim is the leader of Iraq's largest political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI. He lived in exile in Iran for more than two decades before returning home in 2003 after the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

SCIRI was founded in Iran and its affiliated militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained and armed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The militia fought alongside the Iranians in their eight-year war against Iraq in the 1980s.

Al-Hakim's Sunni Arab critics, in fact, charge that he is more Iranian than Iraqi.

"Al-Hakim wants Iran to rule Iraq," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a senior Sunni Arab politician, told Al-Jazeera television interview that aired Sunday.

Al-Hakim, who spoke to Bush for more than an hour at the White House Monday, became leader of the SCIRI when his brother and party founder Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim was killed in a bombing in August 2003. Since then, he has risen from political obscurity into the leader of parliament's largest bloc.

"Bush today met a powerful leader," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of parliament's largest Sunni Arab bloc and a critic of the government. "Al-Hakim was expected to assure Bush that he is not a tool in Iran's hands, but that he can take a message back to the Iranians from him."

While al-Hakim's ties to Iran inspire suspicion among Sunni Iraqis, they apparently enhanced his prestige with the U.S. _ especially as the Bush administration searches for an exit strategy from its 44-month-old military involvement in Iraq.

A report by a bipartisan commission due out Wednesday is expected to offer a set of military and political options for Iraq including an effort to enlist Iran's help in curbing the violence.

Bush refuses to speak directly to Iran, a U.S. adversary for almost 30 years. That prompted al-Hakim to consider volunteering as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran, according to key advisers to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who talked with al-Hakim before his Washington visit.

"He went to Washington with a green light from the Iranians to take back a message from Bush to them on Iraq," said a senior aide to al-Hakim, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Hassan al-Sneid, a lawmaker and al-Maliki confidante, said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was told during a visit to Tehran last week that the Iranians had no objections to a dialogue with the Americans over Iraq.

Iranian influence in Iraq worries the United States and its Arab Sunni allies in the region, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Shiite and Sunni Arab politicians privately complain that their non-Arab neighbor supports Shiite and even some Sunni armed groups in a bid to achieve what analysts call "controlled chaos."

The aim, they said, was to keep the United States bogged down in Iraq and distracted from taking strong action against Iran over its nuclear program.

Al-Hakim has championed giving Iraq's Shiite-dominated security forces the lead role in the fight against Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida in Iraq militants.

Iraqi government advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said al-Hakim had planned to raise the issue with Bush.

Sunni Arabs fear al-Hakim will persuade the Americans to give the security forces a free hand to crush the once-dominant Sunni community. They also fear he will persuade Washington to tone down its demands that the Shiite militias to be disbanded.

Al-Maliki has been reluctant to rein in the militias. Sunnis fear that pressure from Washington to curb the militias will ease after the U.S. military relinquishes the lead on the battlefield to the Iraqis.

Officially, al-Hakim's Badr militia has been disbanded and turned into a political group, but few in Iraq believe it.

Instead, the Badr militia is widely believed to be the source of the top leadership in Iraq's police and army forces. The militia is also suspected of operating death squads targeting Sunni foes and senior members of Saddam's former Baath party.

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Associated Press reporters Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.