|
|
|
news
headlines
Kurds aiming for final agreement next week Ecevit says Turkey prepares its defenses Trouble brews between Kurds/Islamic rebels in Iraq KDP and PUK Set to Seal Agreement on Implementing Four-Year-Old Peace Deal Kurds tell of Iraqi war ignored by outside world Iraq's Kurds Fear Results of U.S. Attack on Saddam Former US diplomat visits Iraqi Kurdistan Turkey's Kurdish party sees no ban before polls Al-Qaeda Surrogate Islamic Group in Southern Kurdistan Destroys Sufi Shrines Two Kurdish guerrillas killed in Southern Kurdistan Police Smash Immigrant Smuggling Ring Washington will not lay the groundwork for a "provisional government" Iraqi Kurds Fear Islamic Militant Group Attack by Islamist Radicals in Kurdistan Brings Kurdish Factions Closer Sweden Arrests Kurd in Immigrant "Honor Killing" Turkey set for November polls, EU reforms in doubt
|
Kurds warned not to join US attack on IraqAFP Aug 17, 2002 Kurds living in Iraq, but outside the control of Baghdad, were warned Saturday not to join any US strike to oust the regime of President Saddam Hussein."The sons of our Kurdish people are urged to act quickly to cut off the path to foreign forces and their auxiliaries before irresponsible statements become a shameful position and a fatal error," said Al-Iraq, the official newspaper of Kurds loyal to Saddam. It was referring to Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan which controls an eastern sector of Iraqi Kurdistan. He told CNN on Tuesday that the US army will be "very warmly welcomed" and offered Washington use of territories his faction controls amid expectation of a military strike against the Baghdad regime. "To carry out successfully their hostile projects, the wicked are counting on certain people (in northern Iraq). At this important time, those concerned should understand that the freedom and independence of Iraq cannot be debated or interpreted," Al-Iraq said. The daily called on Kurds to take "a clear stand with the homeland against the forces of evil so as not to commit a fatal and irreparable error." Talabani on Wednesday denied he had offered the use of military bases controlled by his group for a possible US attack and said his remarks to CNN had been "misinterpreted." "I was asked about the position of the Kurdish people if US forces were deployed in Iraqi Kurdistan and I replied that the Kurdish people, to whom the United States has offered aerial protection, will favourably welcome the presence of US forces to protect them against foreign intervention and any chemical attack" by Baghdad, Talabani said. Talabani said that his PUK party, "like the rest of the Iraqi opposition, thinks that change (in Baghdad) is an Iraqi task that must be undertaken by Iraqi opposition forces with the goal of total democratic change. "These forces are not opposed to getting international help, including American, to realise this goal," he said. Most of northern
Iraq has been outside Baghdad's control since a Kurdish uprising following the
1991 Gulf War.
|
