Washington ? Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi on Wednesday denied that he deliberately fed the United States faulty intelligence to strengthen the case for invading Iraq, calling such accusations “an urban myth.”

Chalabi’s comments to reporters came after he met privately with Bush administration officials and delivered a speech at a conservative think-tank in Washington in which he discussed his vision of Iraq’s political future.

In answering questions from reporters, Chalabi also rebutted accusations that he passed U.S. security secrets to Iran and denied knowledge of an ongoing FBI inquiry into the allegations.

“I have no knowledge of any investigation about me,” he said. “I did not pass any information to Iran or compromise the security of the United States. I did not pass any codes to Iran.”

Earlier, he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary John Snow and President Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. On Friday, he is scheduled to address the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York, before returning to Washington on Monday for a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Today he is expected to meet privately with members of the House Government Reform Committee to discuss issues such as the problem-plagued reconstruction effort in Iraq.

Many Democrats and critics of the administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq expressed dismay that Chalabi was making the rounds within the administration without having to confront questions from Congress about whether he knowingly made faulty claims about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Chalabi, once the hand-picked favorite of the Pentagon to lead Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam’s regime, gradually fell out of favor with the administration. First came charges he provided intelligence he knew was faulty in saying that Saddam was closing in on the ability to build nuclear weapons.

Later, some administration officials suspected he had tipped off Iran that the U.S. had broken that country’s intelligence messaging codes.