In a little noticed foreign-policy move, Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker met Friday with Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the INC’s leadership council in Washington. The INC, an umbrella Iraqi-opposition group, seeks to replace Saddam Hussein with a government based on principles of freedom and democracy. The group operated in the north of Iraq until the mid ’90s, when Saddam Hussein sent in tanks to crush the dissidents.

The meeting represents a step forward for those who believe the best way to help the Iraqi people is to eradicate the Ba’athist dictator, who continues to subjugate his people while pouring available funds into missile technology and weapons of mass destruction. In 1998, the US Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which authorized $97.5 million for the Iraqi resistance, but President Clinton merely paid lip service to the law and made few funds available. President Bush has indicated more willingness to listen to the resistance.

“Saddam has been butchering the Iraqi people for three decades,” said Chalabi in an interview with the Phoenix. “Saddam’s is an evil totalitarian regime. The Iraqi people will suffer as long as Saddam is in power.”

Chalabi’s words came as demonstrators under the auspices of a group called Campaign for the Iraqi People converged on Boston University to protest the bombings and sanctions on Iraq. But trade will only help Saddam Hussein, Chalabi emphasizes. The Iraqi leader’s recent construction of a state-of-the-art Chinese air-defense system, Chalabi says, demonstrates that Saddam Hussein is already squandering money that could buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people on his military.

“How is he paying for those Chinese workers who revamped the radar that the Americans hit?” asks Chalabi. “If you give him oil money, he will not use it to feed people, he will use it to kill people.”