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Talabani: Military operations on Iraq
border must stop
19.7.2006
By Muhammad A. Salih |
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Iraq's President Jalal
Talabani asked Turkey and Iran to stop their
military operations on the border strip between the
three countries and condemned the cross border
operations.
Talabani stated that his government has protested to
the operations by Iran and Turkey and has conveyed
its worries officially to Turkish and Iranian
ambassadors in Iraq.
“In the name of Iraqi government, I announce that we
are not committed to any previous agreements between
Saddam Hussein’s government and Turkish governments
on border issue. That agreement is annulled for us,”
said Talabani in a joint press conference along
Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani, held in
Salahaddin last Thursday.
According to a previous security-cooperation
agreement between Iraq and its northern neighbor,
Ankara’s troops were allowed to cross Iraq’s borders
in pursue of rebel Kurdish fighters.
Prior to
the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, Turkish troops had
crossed Iraq’s northern borders, on several
occasions, as part of military operations to hunt
down Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerillas.
Talabani further hailed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki’s decision to activate the committee in
charge of eliminating the impacts of the
ethnic-cleansing program of Arabization, run by the
former regime of Saddam Hussein.
In his recent visit to Kurdistan Region, PM al-Maliki
pledged to appropriate a $200 million fund for the
committee, expected to normalize Kirkuk’s situations
by the end of 2007. He also promised to release an
already $ 80 million blocked-fund, appropriated for
reconstructing Kirkuk during the rule of the former
Shiite PM Ibrahim al-Jafari.
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Iraqi
President : Jalal Talabani, a Kurd
Photo: Military
Massoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan
Region in Iraq |
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So far Iraq’s three post-war governments have taken
no considerable steps in implementing a
constitutional article setting a roadmap to resolve
Kirkuk issue. This has worried Kurds who consider
Kirkuk as a real touchstone for the sincerity of
Iraqi governments in realizing Kurdish rights and
status in Iraq.
On the issue of Baghdad-Kurdistan relations,
President Barzani said that Kurdistan and Iraqi
governments will open representation offices in
Baghdad and Erbil respectively. For this a
high-ranking Kurdish delegation will visit Baghdad
in a near future, he added.
Iraq’s security situation was one of the issues
discussed between Barzani and Talabani. Kurdistan
enjoys considerable stability and calmness since the
end of the war, despite increasing violence in other
areas of the country.
Barzani rejected some reports that PM al-Maliki had
asked for Kurdish government’s cooperation on
security issues, but said “however, we will do all
what we can to help secure any part of Iraq. But, I
don’t think we need to send Peshmarga (Kurdish
fighters) to areas outside Kurdistan Region.”
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