by Andrew Gully
LONDON, Aug 9 (AFP) - The head of the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein, Salem Chalabi, said Monday an Iraqi arrest warrant against him was part of a smear campaign aimed at discrediting his panel.
"There is some element of a smear campaign against me and therefore against the tribunal, and trying to discredit the tribunal, which I think has happened now," Chalabi, 41, told BBC radio.
Judge Zuhair al-Maliky issued a warrant on Saturday for the arrest of Chalabi in connection with the April murder of Haitham Fadel, director general of the Iraqi finance ministry.
A separate warrant was also issued against his uncle, Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, accused on felony charges of counterfeiting money.
Maliky, chief investigative judge of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, told AFP on Monday that both men would be arrested as soon as they set foot in Iraq.
A British Foreign Office spokesman appeared to rule out the extradition of the younger Chalabi, saying the warrant was an "Iraqi judicial procedure".
"They have not requested any formal help from us," he told AFP.
Speaking in London, Salem Chalabi dismissed Monday the allegations as "ridiculous" and vowed to return to Iraq to clear his name as soon as it was safe to do so.
"I'm in the middle of negotiations to try to work this out," he said, adding that both President Ghazi al-Yawar and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq were involved.
"They have both given me assurances that this is something that they will try to work out relatively quickly," he said.
Although he wanted to return to Baghdad, Chalabi said he had heard that he would be killed by former members of Saddam's Baath party regime if he ended up in jail.
"I plan on returning I just want to get assurances that I will not be killed in a jail, or something," he said, adding that a house he used in Baghdad had recently been shelled.
Ahmed Chalabi told AFP in Tehran Monday that he would return to Baghdad "in a few days" to challenge fraud charges, which he called "outrageous, riduculous and politically motivated lies".
Salem Chalabi hinted that political motives may also have been behind his arrest warrant and warned the allegations could disrupt the progress of his tribunal team in Baghdad.
"I wonder now whether the whole process will continue the way I had hoped," he told BBC radio.
"I have been hearing indirectly that there are people who want the tribunal to be a much more swift process which may not be as fair of a process that I had been hoping for."
Maliky insisted Monday that the warrants were genuine.
"There is no politics influence in this case," he said. "It is an ordinary Iraqi judicial case."
But Chalabi said he had concerns about the motives of the judge who had accused him in the past of fixing the Saddam tribunal for his own political ends.
"I know in the past he (Maliky) has criticised the tribunal, he has criticised me directly, and therefore I wonder whether it's right that someone who has made his opinions known publicly... should be looking at this case," he said.
Chalabi, a lawyer and the executive director of the Iraqi special tribunal, is on a private visit to London.
It was not immediately clear how long he intended to stay.
Ahmed Chalabi said his warrant was part of a US conspiracy.
Former CIA director George "Tenet and his organisation are after me," Chalabi claimed in Tehran.
"Tenet is gone but I can tell you this process is continuing. They keep resorting to various tactics. Not the tactics of statesmen, but the tactics of secret agents. This is like a revolutionary court in the time of Saddam."