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Iraqi PM: Status of Kurdish Peshmerga
remains unchanged despite crackdown on militias
13.4.2008
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April
13, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
and the head of the Kurdistan regional authority
agreed Saturday to retain the current semiautonomous
status of the Peshmerga — the military force
responsible for security in Iraqi Kurdistan region —
despite a government crackdown on militias elsewhere
in Iraq.
"The guards of the province have the cover of
legitimacy inside Kurdistan because they form
organized forces," al-Maliki said after a meeting
with Nechirvan Barzani,www.ekurd.net
prime minister of the
Kurdistan government in 'northern Iraq'.
The decision on the peshmerga comes after al-Maliki
demanded that anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
disband his Mahdi Army or quit politics.
Iraqi forces supported by U.S. and British troops
have mounted a series of attacks on the militants in
Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City district and in the
southern port city of Basra, both strongholds of the
Mahdi Army. |
 
Iraqi Prime minister Jawad Nuri al-Maliki (R), Nechirvan Barzani, Prime
Minister of
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) |
Hundreds have died in a series of clashes which
started with an offensive by government troops in
Basra on March 25.
Al-Maliki and the political parties supporting his
government — which includes the Kurds — insist on
the disbanding of all militias groups.
During Saturday's meeting between al-Maliki and
Barzani, the two agreed that peshmerga forces in
Kurdistan will remain organized within two Iraqi
army divisions numbering 25,000-30,000 troops, said
a government official who attended the meeting.
Other peshmerga forces outside the Kurdish areas
will be disbanded, said the official who asked not
to be named because he was not authorized to speak
to the media.
The fighters have been in control of Iraq's
semiautonomous Kurdistan areas for more than a
decade. During the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in
2003, they assisted advancing U.S. forces and
provided security in other parts of Iraq after the
disbanding of the Saddam Hussein's security forces.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AP
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