1st LD: Iraq's prominent politician dies of heart attack: TV

Iraq's prominent politician Ahmed al-Chalabi has died of a heart attack in the capital of Baghdad, the Iraqi official television reported on Tuesday.

The state-run Iraqiya channel said that Chalabi, head of the parliamentary finance committee, died in his home in Kadhmiyah district in northern Baghdad.

Ahmed Chalabi, 71, is a controversial Iraqi political figure known for his deep ties to the United States and his efforts to promote the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

After the fall of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he returned from exile.

He was a former member of the Governing Council which ruled the country following the U.S. invasion. Before his death, Chalabi serves as a lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament and was heading its finance committee. He was also former deputy prime minister and former oil minister.

Chalabi first rose to prominence in Washington as the head of the Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-backed exile group founded in 1992 that called for regime change in Iraq.

Chalabi was born to a prominent Shiite family, one of the wealthy power elite of Baghdad. He left Iraq with his family in 1956 and spent most of his life in the United States and the United Kingdom.

In the mid-1960s, he received a bachelor degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. In 1969, he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago. Endit