BAGHDAD, June 20
(AFP) - 11h17 - The president of Iraqi Kudistan,
Massoud Barzani, on Monday disputed a US press
report that minority Iraqi Arabs and Turkomen had
been been mistreated in northern provinces.
"The information published by the Washington Post is
groundless and accusations made in them are false,"
Barzani told a press conference here.
On Wednesday, the US daily said that Washington had
serious and credible reports from Iraq concerning
acts of abuse in autonomous Kurdish areas. |
Kurdistan President : Massoud Barzani |
|
US officials, it said, had expressed serious concern
over reports that hundreds of Arabs and Turkmens had
been abducted in the city of Kirkuk and hauled off
to prisons in Arbil and Sulaimaniyah.
Kurds want the oil-rich city to be the capital of
their northern region and to reverse an Arabisation
policy carried out there by the regime of former
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The Post quoted State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack as saying: "These allegations and these
reports are very serious concern to us, and we have
raised our concerns in a forthright way with the
authorities involved or who we believe to be
involved."
McCormack did not cite the Kurds specifically, but a
department official who asked not to be named
confirmed the allegations focused on the Kurds.
On Monday, Barzani said: "The Americans arrest
suspects in Kirkuk and other regions and asked to
send them to Arbil for a specific length of time
until interrogations have been completed or until US
forces took them back again."
He did not say who carried out the interrogations.
"We did not arrest anyone, and those transferred to
Arbil were at the insistent request of the
Americans, who subsequently took them back."
McCormack had formally denied any US implication in
the matter.
"Our coalition forces, according to every report
that I have, not only were not involved in these
activities, but in fact, raised their concerns about
the fact that they had serious and credible reports"
about them, he said.
AFP
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