VOTE SET TO CEMENT KURDISH CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

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Ex-president of Iraq Talabani dies – Amir offers condolences

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq, Oct 3, (Agencies): Ex-Iraqi president and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani died on Tuesday in Germany, officials in his party told AFP. Talabani, 83, was Iraq’s president from 2005 to 2014 and a key figure in Iraqi Kurdistan, where voters last week overwhelmingly backed independence in a disputed referendum. “Our leader died in Germany,” an official with Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said.

A family member said Talabani’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he had been transported to Germany, along with his wife and two children, before the referendum. Meanwhile, His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al- Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent a cable of condolences to Iraq’s President Fuad Masum and Prime Minister Dr Haider Al-Abadi. His Highness the Amir expressed his sincere condolences and sorrow over the death of former president Jalal Talabani. His Highness prayed to Allah Almighty to bestow mercy upon the deceased, place him in His heaven, and inspire his family with patience and solace.

His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah sent similar cables. Iraqi Kurdish lawmaker Zana Said paid tribute to Talabani as “the only president whose death saddens Arabs, Kurds and all other ethnicities”. “We pray to God that his death will help to bring back good relations between the brothers of Iraq.”

Talabani’s death, following a decades-old struggle for Kurdish statehood, came after Iraq’s Kurds voted 92.7 percent in favour of independence in the Sept 25 referendum. The vote, rejected by Baghdad as illegal, has put deep strain on ties between the Kurds and central Iraqi authorities, who have cut off international flights to the region and threatened further action.

Talabani was an avuncular politician and a skilled negotiator, who spent years building bridges between the country’s divided factions, despite his efforts for Kurdish independence. Born in 1933 in the mountain village of Kalkan, he studied law at Baghdad University and did a stint in the army before joining the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of current Kurdistan regional president Massud Barzani. Talabani took to the hills in a first uprising against the Iraqi government in 1961 but famously fell out with Barzani, who sued for peace with Baghdad, and joined a KDP splinter faction in 1964.

Eleven years later, he established the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) after Barzani’s forces, abandoned by their Iranian, US and Israeli allies, were routed by Saddam Hussein’s army. He became president in April 2005 after the first post-Saddam election in Iraq and continued in the post until 2014, when he was replaced by the current president, Fuad Masum. Iraq’s head of state plays a largely ceremonial role and is elected by members of parliament. In August 2008, the married father of two underwent successful heart surgery in the United States, then in 2012 he was flown to Germany after suffering a stroke, casting doubt over his ability to ever return to Iraq. He did go back in July 2014, with Iraq in crisis after the Islamic State group had taken control of swathes of the country, and was replaced by Masum following a parliamentary election.

Kurds plan 2 polls
Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region is calling presidential and parliamentary elections for Nov 1, the Erbil-based Rudaw TV said on Tuesday, as the Kurdish leadership cements its case for independence. A referendum held on Sept 25 in the country’s Kurdish-held northern regions delivered an overwhelming ‘yes’ for independence, raising fears in Iraq and abroad of ethnic strains and a weakening of a USbacked campaign against Islamic State.

The elections would be calculated to reinforce the legitimacy of the leadership ahead of a drive for outright independence and any negotiations that might involve. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday Turkey would impose further sanctions on northern Iraq over the vote. Powerful neighbours Ankara and Tehran fear it could fuel Kurdish separatism within their own borders. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has not declared independence.

The November polls are explicitly for parliament and presidency of the region, not for an independent state. Baghdad retaliated to the referendum with an international flights ban on Kurdish airports, while Iran and Turkey launched joint military drills with Iraqi troops at their borders with Iraqi Kurdistan. The Shi’ite Arab-led Iraqi government has rejected a KRG offer to discuss independence.

It demanded Kurdish leaders cancel the result of the referendum or face continued sanctions, international isolation and possible military intervention. On Tuesday, the federal parliament in Baghdad raised the threat of excluding those among Kurdish members who voted in the referendum, on the basis that the vote was unconstitutional.

The parliament decided to collect the names of those who voted in the referendum as a step towards their impeachment by the Higher Federal Court, Speaker Salim al-Jabouri told a news conference after the session, boycotted by most Kurdish MPs. Jabouri said he was willing to open a dialogue with the KRG to resolve disputes but ruled out talks on independence.

Masoud Barzani, the heir of a dynasty which has led a Kurdish struggle for independence for over a century, has held the KRG presidency since its establishment in 2005, two years after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. His tenure was extended beyond his second term, in 2013, as fresh turmoil engulfed the region and Islamic State overran, in 2014, about a third of Iraq, threatening the Kurdish region.

It was unclear whether Barzani would or could stand in the November poll as Kurdish law says a president cannot stay in office for more than two terms. Campaigning for the two elections will start on Oct 15, Rudaw TV cited the High Elections and Referendum Commission chief Hendrean Mohammed. Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate’’ effectively collapsed in July, when their stronghold in Mosul, west of the KRG capital Erbil, fell to a US-backed Iraqi offensive with the participation of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

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