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Rice urges Kurds to work for peaceful,
unified Iraq
7.10.2006 |
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Erbil, Kurdistan
Region (Iraq), October 6, -- US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice met the leaders of Iraq's
autonomous Kurdish region on Friday, urging them to
cooperate with Iraqi Arabs in building a peaceful
and unified country.
Rice dropped in on Kurdish regional president Massud
Barzani in Arbil, his northern capital, after an
unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital Baghdad,
which is in the grip of a brutal sectarian conflict.
"The Kurdish people will ... certainly be better
served if Baghdad and its surrounding areas are
stable and democratic," Rice told reporters at a
joint press conference with Barzani.
"We had a very good discussion about the national
reconciliation process and the vision of unified
democratic Iraq that is stable, that is at peace and
at peace with its neighbors," she said.
Grateful for US support in throwing off the yoke of
ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Kurds have
put their long-cherished dreams of independence on
hold while the Baghdad government struggles to
rebuild the war torn country.
But separatist tensions are never far from the
surface, and fierce rows have recently erupted over
the banning of Iraq's national flag in the north and
the Kurdish government's determination to develop
its own oil industry.
Washington fears a Kurdish declaration of
independence would accelerate the possible
disintegration of Iraq and knows it would be bound
to anger regional ally Turkey, which has a restive
Kurdish minority of its own.
Kurdish leaders regularly warn that they will secede
if the rights of their region -- a union of three
Iraqi provinces which has been broadly autonomous
since 1991 -- are trampled on by the Arab-led
Baghdad administration.
This threat reared its head again last week, when
the Kurds announced the development of a new oil
field, amid complaints from the central government
that it should be consulted before deals are signed
with foreign firms.
Barzani's oil minister furiously rejected federal
oversight of oil contracts, and repeated the threat
to declare independence. |
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , left, talks
with reporters during a news conference after
meeting with the President of the Kurdistan region
(Iraq) , Massoud Barzani, right, in Erbil, Iraq
Friday, Oct. 6,
Photo:AP
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice(C) is flanked
by Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan regional Prime
Minister Nechirvan Barazani(L) and US Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad(R) upon her arrival to Erbil
International airport.
Photo:AFP |
Rice tried to calm the oil row during her visit.
"Our view... which I think most Iraqis agree with,
is that oil needs to be a unifying factor and not
one that would help to make the country less
unified," she told reporters late Thursday.
Barzani said after meeting Rice: "We are for a fair
distribution of oil revenues for the Iraqis."
Meanwhile, officials in Baghdad confirmed that a
Kurdish lawmaker in Iraq's national parliament had
been kidnapped and murdered during Rice's visit,
which came after Monday's breakthrough pledge by
Iraq's political factions to work together to halt
the bloodshed.
Rice met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki,
President Jalal Talabani and senior leaders from
both sides of Iraq's bitter sectarian divide between
Sunni and Shiite factions.
"The mass murders have shocked the people," Maliki
said on Iraqi television, insisting that the
reconciliation initiative was not reached under
foreign pressure "but by the will of the Iraqis."
The violence convulsing the capital was in full
evidence for Rice's visit, with 16 US soldiers
killed since Monday. A rocket attack on the airport
upon her arrival forced her military C-130 transport
plane to spend 45 minutes circling the airfield.
Rice departed Arbil after a delay of more than two
hours due to aircraft problems and headed to London
for a meeting of six major powers on whether to urge
the United Nations to slap sanctions on Iran over
its suspect nuclear programme.
The Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, declared a total
curfew Friday evening in the northern oil city of
Kirkuk, shutting down entrances to the city for an
undisclosed period of time, police said.
"This operation comes within the context of a new
security being implemented by Iraqi forces in Kirkuk,"
said Captain Emad Jassem Khidr of Kirkuk police.
Police said they had collected 35 corpses over a
period of 24 hours in Baghdad, mostly in the Sunni
western half of the city.
The bodies bore the tell tale markings of Baghdad's
grim sectarian war with signs of torture and bullet
wounds to the head.
AFP
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