In an increasingly messy process, all the 500 plus politicians that initially had been banned from standing as candidates in the 7 March elections have reportedly today been given the green light to take part unless their names have already been changed unilaterally by the political entities affected by the ban.
SEE: http://gulfanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/reinstated-for-the-time-being/
mercredi 3 février 2010
mardi 2 février 2010
Abu Ghraib genebank rises from the ashes, thanks to Sanaa Abdul Wahab Al-Sheikh
by Luigi on February 1, 2010
http://agro.biodiver.se/2010/02/abu-ghraib-genebank-rises-from-the-ashes-thanks-to-sanaa/
Meet Mrs Sanaa Abdul Wahab Al-Sheikh.
She used to work at the old Iraqi national genebank at Abu Ghraib.
That genebank was looted and destroyed in the aftermath of the invasion. But Mrs Sanaa says she saved about a thousand accessions by hiding them underground and in her fridge.
She now works at the new, rebuilt Iraqi national genebank at Abu Ghraib, under the State Board for Seed Testing and Certification. And the accessions she saved from the old collection have been joined by hundreds of others that she’s been collecting from farmers’ fields since 2004.
dimanche 31 janvier 2010
Urgent Appeal to save Iraqi Female woman writer/blogger who has been arrested by the Iraqi Forces
URGENT UPDATE : Iraqi Female Writer/Blogger Hiba Al-Shamaree.
Layla Anwar
arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2010/01/urgent-update-iraqi-female.html
January 31, 2010Following my previous post here, I just received this fresh information regarding Hiba Al-Shamaree this fellow Iraqi woman writer/blogger who has been kidnapped/arrested by the Iraqi forces on the 20th of January 2010 in the Sayyediya neighborhood in Baghdad.
Her sister has just updated her blog with the following :
Hiba Al-Shamaree is detained by Baghdad's security forces on the charges of supporting the Iraqi Resistance (through her writings), she will be presented to the Criminal/Penal Court...
I am now authorized by Hiba to reveal her true identity to you.
Her name : Hanan Ali Ahmad Al Mashadani
Age : 33 years old
Profession: Doctor in Ophtalmology
The charges pressed against her : Inciting to violence and supporting the Resistance and according to informed sources this is a charge that falls under the clause of Terrorism as per the Iraqi law.
Hiba lived in Amman with us, but she insisted on going to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission/assignment, for a project financed by an Indian NGO called HMOK and which dealt with deaf and mute Iraqi children. Hiba was working as a consultant for this Indian NGO.
They discovered her pen name Hiba Al Shamaree because when they arrested her she had her laptop with her which they confiscated and they saw the articles she has been posting on her blog.
Signed Huda Al Shamaree, sister of the doctor and writer Hiba Al Shamaree.
End of Message
PLEASE, THIS IS AN URGENT PLEA -- THEY WILL DESTROY HER. THEY WILL PUT HER THROUGH THE MOST HORRENDOUS OF TORTURES, including RAPE. I KNOW WHAT AM TALKING ABOUT. I KNOW. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HELP.
CONTACT ANYONE YOU CAN. HIBA'S ONLY CRIME IS HOLDING A BLOG. THAT'S ALL.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. YOU CAN'T LET A 33 YEAR OLD WOMAN DOCTOR BE RAPED, TORTURED AND KILLED THAT WAY. BECAUSE KILLED SHE WILL BE .
YOU CAN LET HER DIE THAT WAY -- JUST BECAUSE OF A BLOG. SHE WAS IN BAGHDAD FOR THAT INDIAN NGO, ON A HUMANITARIAN ASSIGNMENT FOR DEAF AND MUTE IRAQI CHILDREN.
THIS IS NOT A TERRORIST/CRIMINAL ACT -- HELPING DEAF AND MUTE CHILDREN.
HER BLOG IS JUST A BLOG. SHE HOLDS NO GUNS, SHE HAS NO WEAPONS, SHE IS NOT AFFILIATED TO ANY TERRORIST GROUP. SHE JUST HAD HER PEN.
PLEASE HELP HER, PLEASE HELP US.
DISTRIBUTE THIS AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE.-- HRW, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, THE RED CROSS, U.N, ANYONE AND EVERYONE...YOU OWE IT TO US, YOU BROUGHT "DEMOCRACY" TO IRAQ, YOU OWE IT TO US. YOU OWE IT TO SAVE THIS YOUNG IRAQI WOMAN'S LIFE.
Layla Anwar
arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2010/01/urgent-update-iraqi-female.html
January 31, 2010Following my previous post here, I just received this fresh information regarding Hiba Al-Shamaree this fellow Iraqi woman writer/blogger who has been kidnapped/arrested by the Iraqi forces on the 20th of January 2010 in the Sayyediya neighborhood in Baghdad.
Her sister has just updated her blog with the following :
Hiba Al-Shamaree is detained by Baghdad's security forces on the charges of supporting the Iraqi Resistance (through her writings), she will be presented to the Criminal/Penal Court...
I am now authorized by Hiba to reveal her true identity to you.
Her name : Hanan Ali Ahmad Al Mashadani
Age : 33 years old
Profession: Doctor in Ophtalmology
The charges pressed against her : Inciting to violence and supporting the Resistance and according to informed sources this is a charge that falls under the clause of Terrorism as per the Iraqi law.
Hiba lived in Amman with us, but she insisted on going to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission/assignment, for a project financed by an Indian NGO called HMOK and which dealt with deaf and mute Iraqi children. Hiba was working as a consultant for this Indian NGO.
They discovered her pen name Hiba Al Shamaree because when they arrested her she had her laptop with her which they confiscated and they saw the articles she has been posting on her blog.
Signed Huda Al Shamaree, sister of the doctor and writer Hiba Al Shamaree.
End of Message
PLEASE, THIS IS AN URGENT PLEA -- THEY WILL DESTROY HER. THEY WILL PUT HER THROUGH THE MOST HORRENDOUS OF TORTURES, including RAPE. I KNOW WHAT AM TALKING ABOUT. I KNOW. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HELP.
CONTACT ANYONE YOU CAN. HIBA'S ONLY CRIME IS HOLDING A BLOG. THAT'S ALL.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. YOU CAN'T LET A 33 YEAR OLD WOMAN DOCTOR BE RAPED, TORTURED AND KILLED THAT WAY. BECAUSE KILLED SHE WILL BE .
YOU CAN LET HER DIE THAT WAY -- JUST BECAUSE OF A BLOG. SHE WAS IN BAGHDAD FOR THAT INDIAN NGO, ON A HUMANITARIAN ASSIGNMENT FOR DEAF AND MUTE IRAQI CHILDREN.
THIS IS NOT A TERRORIST/CRIMINAL ACT -- HELPING DEAF AND MUTE CHILDREN.
HER BLOG IS JUST A BLOG. SHE HOLDS NO GUNS, SHE HAS NO WEAPONS, SHE IS NOT AFFILIATED TO ANY TERRORIST GROUP. SHE JUST HAD HER PEN.
PLEASE HELP HER, PLEASE HELP US.
DISTRIBUTE THIS AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE.-- HRW, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, THE RED CROSS, U.N, ANYONE AND EVERYONE...YOU OWE IT TO US, YOU BROUGHT "DEMOCRACY" TO IRAQ, YOU OWE IT TO US. YOU OWE IT TO SAVE THIS YOUNG IRAQI WOMAN'S LIFE.
samedi 30 janvier 2010
George Galloway: "Not only should Iraq not have been invaded, but there should have been no sanctions"
George Galloway MP
MP for the Respect party for Bethnal Green and Bow
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1723/1/
It was pitiful the way he was allowed to dominate the room, to avoid questions being asked, and to mislead the public when challenged. The ghosts of the people killed in Iraq were not represented in the room either. He was allowed to report that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions in general and 1441 in particular. But in fact, they weren't in breach of it. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
MP for the Respect party for Bethnal Green and Bow
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1723/1/
It was pitiful the way he was allowed to dominate the room, to avoid questions being asked, and to mislead the public when challenged. The ghosts of the people killed in Iraq were not represented in the room either. He was allowed to report that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions in general and 1441 in particular. But in fact, they weren't in breach of it. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Not only should Iraq not have been invaded, but there should have been no sanctions. This was entirely absent from the discourse today.
He was allowed to go on and on about "Saddam's last chance to comply", but Iraq was not in breach and had not been since 1994. Blair was allowed to tell a blatant lie and the panel ignored it.
One of the reasons for the material breach, he said, was that Iraq had broken the terms of the resolution that called on them to allow weapons inspectors to interrogate army officials outside the country. In fact, the resolution authorised the arms inspectors to request army officials outside thecountry, but no such request was made.
So Iraq could not have refused and it could not have been in breach of 1441. Either the panel didn't know it or, if they did know, they didn't have the courage to confront him on it – and that's a whopper.
We have no closure. The campaign to hold these people to account continues and will, no doubt, continue into the general election.
Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry"
Chris Floyd
www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1915-blood-is-his-ar gument-tony-blairs-gentle-cuddling-at-iraq-qinquiryq.html
January 29, 2010
On Friday, Tony Blair appeared before the "Chilcot Inquiry," the panel of hoary, lugubrious Establishment worthies set up to "examine" -- with extreme circumspection, exquisite politeness, and all due reverence to authority -- the "origins" of Britain's involvement in the mass-murder spree known as the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The event could be summed up entirely in a single headline:
Tony Blair to a million dead Iraqis, and the grieving survivors of British soldiers: Fuck you.
Blair's appearance before the panel has occasioned some entirely misplaced and uninformed kudos from some in the American progressiverse, who laud the Brits for holding such a bold inquiry. "It's the kind of thing you would never see in the United States," they say, forgetting, if they ever knew, such minor matters as the Watergate hearings -- which actually had the power to send people to jail for lying, unlike the completely powerless Chilcot panel -- or the Watergate grand jury, which named a sitting president as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a criminal case, or even the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton by the United States Senate, which I believe happened well within the adulthood of at least some of our leading progressives.
In any case, there was never any chance that the well-wadded Chilcot worthies were going to lay a glove on former PM turned corporate shill and Catholic saint-in-waiting. Blair was never going to do anything but repeat the bluster -- and outright lies -- he has regurgitated ad infinitum about his blood-soaked adventure with George W. Bush -- and the Chilcotniks were never going to call him on his bullshit. [Blair's knowing and deliberate lies are thoroughly detailed here.]And so it proved.
Blair strutted in -- through a back entrance, to avoid protestors -- and did the expected regurgitation. The war was legal, the war was righteous, the war was legal, and it was the right thing to do. After all, he claimed over and over, Iraq was clearly "in breach of UN sanctions ordering him to destroy all his weapons of mass destruction." Yet, as one observer noted in the Guardian, none of the Chilcot worthies deigned to point out to Blair that Iraq could not possibly been in breach of UN orders to disarm -- because it had no weapons of mass destruction. It was already disarmed -- a fact which the US and UK had known since 1995, and which could have been reconfirmed by the UN inspection teams in 2003 ... if Bush and Blair had not invaded before the inspections were over.
But Blair's illogical connections were never challenged by the panel, nor did he explain why he and Bush invaded before the inspections were completed. Instead, he simply evoke 9/11 over and over and over again -- and then blamed "the external elements of Iran and al Qaeda" for anything that went wrong after the invasion. Apparently, there was not a single Iraqi opposed to the destruction of their country; it was just a bunch of "outside agitators" causing trouble. Blair's absolute erasure of the Iraqi people in these passages is a perfect encapsulation of the whole mindset that drove the Anglo-American attack: the Iraqis are non-people, they are worthless chits in a geopolitical game, they are rags and automatons at the mercy of big-time players like the Western powers, Iran and al Qaeda.
Indeed, this was his main theme of the day: it was Iran's fault. In fact, Blair seemed to regard his appearance before Iraq War panel chiefly as an opportunity to foment war fever for a new "humanitarian intervention" against Iran.
As Jonathan Freedland notes:
Blair pushed further, apparently touting a new war in the Persian Gulf, this time against Iraq's neighbor, Iran. All day Blair used his platform to bring up Iran, even when it was only tangentially related to the topic in hand. The arguments that applied in 2002 – about WMD falling into terrorist hands – applied in spades to Iran in 2010, he said.
Blair took "responsibility" for the war -- but it was a responsibility he gladly shouldered, one he was proud of. As for all the people who have died because of this criminal folly, Blair had nothing nothing to say.
As Jonathan Freedland notes:
I thought Blair would have prepared a closing statement that would express, if not regret or apology, at least sorrow for the young British men and women in uniform who had lost their lives. There was, surely, a way for a communicator as gifted as Blair to do that without giving ground on the justness, as he still sees it, of the war. And yet, even when Sir John Chilcot asked him one last time if he had anything to add, Blair did not pay tribute to the dead – British or Iraqi. He simply said "no".
Just like the Hutton inquiry into the strange death of WMD whistleblower Daniel Kelly -- the results of which have recently been sealed up for the next 70 years in a "highly unusual move" by UK authorities -- the Chilcot panel was never going to bring any powerful miscreant to accountability. It was set up -- like the American 9/11 Commission -- to siphon off festering anger and suspicion with a show of official concern. By stirring up just enough murk to cover the small nuggets of truth that inevitably surface in such probes, the Chilcot inquiry, like Hutton, the 9/11 Commission, will be able to claim that while there may have been some regrettable "system" failures here and there on this and that, no actual powerful person should be held accountable for any inadvertent "mistakes" that were made.
And the scam is already working. One of the panel of Guardian commentators, writing alongside Freedland, the "moderate," Broder-like Martin Kettle, was already chewing up some conventional wisdom cud by the end of the day:
On the other side of the argument there were fewer interruptions than there might have been, fewer silly stunts, and actually fewer demonstrators than one might have expected. Though passions are still strong, it may be that a lot of the poison and pain is ebbing. In that sense, today was probably cathartic.
Yes, as good old Kevin Drum always used to say back in the old days, when splitting the difference between some atrocious Bush policy and the president's "far left" critics, "that sounds about right." That hits the comfortable middle spot: yes, it was all a bit unpleasant, but now the "pain is ebbing," and we can look forward to seeing fewer of those "silly stunts" that shrill extremists have used to draw attention to the mass murder of human beings in a war based on ostensible reasons which even the war's architects now happily admit were unfounded -- and, according to Blair, unimportant. So Saddam didn't have WMDs? So what? It was a good thing to kill all those people anyway.
Another of Kettle's fellow commentators has a different view, however, and we'll give the final word here to Seamus Milne:
The spectacle of official indulgence of a man many here and abroad regard as responsible for a devastating war crime has been sickening. John Chilcot said at one point that the lessons of occupation had been "expensive, but very necessary". Millions of Iraqis who have actually paid that price take a very different view.
www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1915-blood-is-his-ar gument-tony-blairs-gentle-cuddling-at-iraq-qinquiryq.html
January 29, 2010
On Friday, Tony Blair appeared before the "Chilcot Inquiry," the panel of hoary, lugubrious Establishment worthies set up to "examine" -- with extreme circumspection, exquisite politeness, and all due reverence to authority -- the "origins" of Britain's involvement in the mass-murder spree known as the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The event could be summed up entirely in a single headline:
Tony Blair to a million dead Iraqis, and the grieving survivors of British soldiers: Fuck you.
Blair's appearance before the panel has occasioned some entirely misplaced and uninformed kudos from some in the American progressiverse, who laud the Brits for holding such a bold inquiry. "It's the kind of thing you would never see in the United States," they say, forgetting, if they ever knew, such minor matters as the Watergate hearings -- which actually had the power to send people to jail for lying, unlike the completely powerless Chilcot panel -- or the Watergate grand jury, which named a sitting president as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a criminal case, or even the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton by the United States Senate, which I believe happened well within the adulthood of at least some of our leading progressives.
In any case, there was never any chance that the well-wadded Chilcot worthies were going to lay a glove on former PM turned corporate shill and Catholic saint-in-waiting. Blair was never going to do anything but repeat the bluster -- and outright lies -- he has regurgitated ad infinitum about his blood-soaked adventure with George W. Bush -- and the Chilcotniks were never going to call him on his bullshit. [Blair's knowing and deliberate lies are thoroughly detailed here.]And so it proved.
Blair strutted in -- through a back entrance, to avoid protestors -- and did the expected regurgitation. The war was legal, the war was righteous, the war was legal, and it was the right thing to do. After all, he claimed over and over, Iraq was clearly "in breach of UN sanctions ordering him to destroy all his weapons of mass destruction." Yet, as one observer noted in the Guardian, none of the Chilcot worthies deigned to point out to Blair that Iraq could not possibly been in breach of UN orders to disarm -- because it had no weapons of mass destruction. It was already disarmed -- a fact which the US and UK had known since 1995, and which could have been reconfirmed by the UN inspection teams in 2003 ... if Bush and Blair had not invaded before the inspections were over.
But Blair's illogical connections were never challenged by the panel, nor did he explain why he and Bush invaded before the inspections were completed. Instead, he simply evoke 9/11 over and over and over again -- and then blamed "the external elements of Iran and al Qaeda" for anything that went wrong after the invasion. Apparently, there was not a single Iraqi opposed to the destruction of their country; it was just a bunch of "outside agitators" causing trouble. Blair's absolute erasure of the Iraqi people in these passages is a perfect encapsulation of the whole mindset that drove the Anglo-American attack: the Iraqis are non-people, they are worthless chits in a geopolitical game, they are rags and automatons at the mercy of big-time players like the Western powers, Iran and al Qaeda.
Indeed, this was his main theme of the day: it was Iran's fault. In fact, Blair seemed to regard his appearance before Iraq War panel chiefly as an opportunity to foment war fever for a new "humanitarian intervention" against Iran.
As Jonathan Freedland notes:
Blair pushed further, apparently touting a new war in the Persian Gulf, this time against Iraq's neighbor, Iran. All day Blair used his platform to bring up Iran, even when it was only tangentially related to the topic in hand. The arguments that applied in 2002 – about WMD falling into terrorist hands – applied in spades to Iran in 2010, he said.
Blair took "responsibility" for the war -- but it was a responsibility he gladly shouldered, one he was proud of. As for all the people who have died because of this criminal folly, Blair had nothing nothing to say.
As Jonathan Freedland notes:
I thought Blair would have prepared a closing statement that would express, if not regret or apology, at least sorrow for the young British men and women in uniform who had lost their lives. There was, surely, a way for a communicator as gifted as Blair to do that without giving ground on the justness, as he still sees it, of the war. And yet, even when Sir John Chilcot asked him one last time if he had anything to add, Blair did not pay tribute to the dead – British or Iraqi. He simply said "no".
Just like the Hutton inquiry into the strange death of WMD whistleblower Daniel Kelly -- the results of which have recently been sealed up for the next 70 years in a "highly unusual move" by UK authorities -- the Chilcot panel was never going to bring any powerful miscreant to accountability. It was set up -- like the American 9/11 Commission -- to siphon off festering anger and suspicion with a show of official concern. By stirring up just enough murk to cover the small nuggets of truth that inevitably surface in such probes, the Chilcot inquiry, like Hutton, the 9/11 Commission, will be able to claim that while there may have been some regrettable "system" failures here and there on this and that, no actual powerful person should be held accountable for any inadvertent "mistakes" that were made.
And the scam is already working. One of the panel of Guardian commentators, writing alongside Freedland, the "moderate," Broder-like Martin Kettle, was already chewing up some conventional wisdom cud by the end of the day:
On the other side of the argument there were fewer interruptions than there might have been, fewer silly stunts, and actually fewer demonstrators than one might have expected. Though passions are still strong, it may be that a lot of the poison and pain is ebbing. In that sense, today was probably cathartic.
Yes, as good old Kevin Drum always used to say back in the old days, when splitting the difference between some atrocious Bush policy and the president's "far left" critics, "that sounds about right." That hits the comfortable middle spot: yes, it was all a bit unpleasant, but now the "pain is ebbing," and we can look forward to seeing fewer of those "silly stunts" that shrill extremists have used to draw attention to the mass murder of human beings in a war based on ostensible reasons which even the war's architects now happily admit were unfounded -- and, according to Blair, unimportant. So Saddam didn't have WMDs? So what? It was a good thing to kill all those people anyway.
Another of Kettle's fellow commentators has a different view, however, and we'll give the final word here to Seamus Milne:
The spectacle of official indulgence of a man many here and abroad regard as responsible for a devastating war crime has been sickening. John Chilcot said at one point that the lessons of occupation had been "expensive, but very necessary". Millions of Iraqis who have actually paid that price take a very different view.
IHEC will open eight polling stations in Jordan
Amman - Iraq's election watchdog, the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), has set up a representation office in Amman for arranging and supervising the voting process for about 500,000 Iraqis living in Jordan, government officials said Friday.
The systematic participation of Iraqis living in Jordan in the March general elections topped discussions conducted over the past couple of days by the visiting official spokesman of the Iraqi government Ali Dabbagh with Jordanian officials.
Dabbagh, who carried a message from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to his Jordanian counterpart Samir Rifai, met on Thursday with Jordanian Interior Minister Nayef Qadi to discuss measures taken by the Jordanian authorities to ensure a smooth polling process for Iraqis in Jordan.
The two sides agreed to open eight polling stations in the cities of Amman, Zarqa and Irabid for Iraqis who are going to cast their votes on March 7, two days earlier than polling inside Iraq scheduled for March 9, an official said.
It is the second time that Jordan has allowed Iraqis residing in the Kingdom to vote in their country's general parliamentary elections
The systematic participation of Iraqis living in Jordan in the March general elections topped discussions conducted over the past couple of days by the visiting official spokesman of the Iraqi government Ali Dabbagh with Jordanian officials.
Dabbagh, who carried a message from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to his Jordanian counterpart Samir Rifai, met on Thursday with Jordanian Interior Minister Nayef Qadi to discuss measures taken by the Jordanian authorities to ensure a smooth polling process for Iraqis in Jordan.
The two sides agreed to open eight polling stations in the cities of Amman, Zarqa and Irabid for Iraqis who are going to cast their votes on March 7, two days earlier than polling inside Iraq scheduled for March 9, an official said.
It is the second time that Jordan has allowed Iraqis residing in the Kingdom to vote in their country's general parliamentary elections
Barzani urges Turkey’s Kurds to support gov’t initiative
Reiterating his strong support for the democratization initiative launched by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government last summer, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani has encouraged Kurdish people of Turkey for supporting the initiative which seeks to settle Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish problem by expanding the democratic rights of its Kurdish citizens.
Barzani, the head of the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, held talks in Washington earlier this week. He held talks with both US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the visit which came ahead of key parliamentary elections to be held in Iraq in March.
His remarks on Turkey’s Kurdish issue came on Wednesday as he delivered a speech at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institute in Washington.
There is need to focus on the democratization policy assumed and efforts exerted by Turkey at the moment in order to resolve the Kurdish issue, Barzani firstly noted, when asked whether the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which also has bases in northern Iraq, continues its terrorist activities against Turkey and whether Turkey eventually continues its military operations against the PKK.
Barzani stated Iraqi Kurds’ strong support for the Turkish government’s efforts for resolving of the issue through peaceful means, adding: “We have all been convinced that military means or political pressures never bring solution, but if this option is preferred we will not be a part of it.”
The democratization process helps improvement of bilateral relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan region as well, Barzani noted, arguing that Turkey no longer perceived the regional administration in northern Iraq as a threat against itself.
“We don’t find the Constitutional Court’s ruling appropriate,” Barzani was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency, referring to a December ruling by Turkey’s Constitutional court for shutting down the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of ethnic separatism.
“We don’t believe that this [ruling] will serve for the peace process which has been launched. It is a decision against democracy,” Barzani went on saying. “My advice to my Kurdish siblings in Turkey is to assume a positive manner and make cooperation with the Turkish government so that, by this means, let’s not miss this opportunity, let’s follow up the peaceful process,” he, however, added.
Relations between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey deteriorated sharply following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Turkey accused the Kurdish administration of harboring the PKK, which launched attacks on Turkish targets from its bases in northern Iraq, and threatened to declare war if the Kurds attempted to seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk -- home to a sizable Turkmen population.
But tension is now being replaced by a dramatic rapprochement, and the government’s Kurdish initiative is further strengthening the positive trend in ties. In a speech delivered to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in November, Barzani had welcomed the progress made in Turkey’s relations with the Kurdish administration and described Turkey’s initiative to solve its decades-long Kurdish issue as “Prime Minister Erdoğan’s brave Kurdish peace initiative.” Barzani further added that the Kurdish authorities will support Turkey in its efforts to end the conflict with the PKK.
29.01.2010
News
TODAY’S ZAMAN
Barzani, the head of the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, held talks in Washington earlier this week. He held talks with both US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the visit which came ahead of key parliamentary elections to be held in Iraq in March.
His remarks on Turkey’s Kurdish issue came on Wednesday as he delivered a speech at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institute in Washington.
There is need to focus on the democratization policy assumed and efforts exerted by Turkey at the moment in order to resolve the Kurdish issue, Barzani firstly noted, when asked whether the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which also has bases in northern Iraq, continues its terrorist activities against Turkey and whether Turkey eventually continues its military operations against the PKK.
Barzani stated Iraqi Kurds’ strong support for the Turkish government’s efforts for resolving of the issue through peaceful means, adding: “We have all been convinced that military means or political pressures never bring solution, but if this option is preferred we will not be a part of it.”
The democratization process helps improvement of bilateral relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan region as well, Barzani noted, arguing that Turkey no longer perceived the regional administration in northern Iraq as a threat against itself.
“We don’t find the Constitutional Court’s ruling appropriate,” Barzani was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency, referring to a December ruling by Turkey’s Constitutional court for shutting down the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of ethnic separatism.
“We don’t believe that this [ruling] will serve for the peace process which has been launched. It is a decision against democracy,” Barzani went on saying. “My advice to my Kurdish siblings in Turkey is to assume a positive manner and make cooperation with the Turkish government so that, by this means, let’s not miss this opportunity, let’s follow up the peaceful process,” he, however, added.
Relations between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey deteriorated sharply following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Turkey accused the Kurdish administration of harboring the PKK, which launched attacks on Turkish targets from its bases in northern Iraq, and threatened to declare war if the Kurds attempted to seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk -- home to a sizable Turkmen population.
But tension is now being replaced by a dramatic rapprochement, and the government’s Kurdish initiative is further strengthening the positive trend in ties. In a speech delivered to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in November, Barzani had welcomed the progress made in Turkey’s relations with the Kurdish administration and described Turkey’s initiative to solve its decades-long Kurdish issue as “Prime Minister Erdoğan’s brave Kurdish peace initiative.” Barzani further added that the Kurdish authorities will support Turkey in its efforts to end the conflict with the PKK.
29.01.2010
News
TODAY’S ZAMAN
vendredi 29 janvier 2010
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