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Barzani calls for a Federal Democratic Parliamentary State in Iraq.
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Kurds
want to know "alternative" before joining US action against Saddam
July 4, 2002
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of two main groups controlling northern Iraq, will not take part in a US offensive to oust President Saddam Hussein "unless it is sure of the alternative," its leader said Thursday. "Unless we are sure of the alternative, we cannot take part in any operation to change the regime," Massoud Barzani told the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat. But should US President George W. Bush's administration "decide to settle the conflict militarily, we cannot prevent it from doing so," he said. "We did not, and will not, discuss the Kurdish identity of Kirkuk with anyone," Barzani said, when asked to comment on reports that the Kurds had demanded control of the oil-rich northern Kirkuk region in return for joining US action against Saddam. But he said that he opposed the partition of Iraq. "We are against the partition of Iraq whether or not a massive military offensive is launched ... and we will not back any plan to carve up Iraq," Barzani said. The KDP chief, whose group shares control of a Kurdish enclave with Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), denied that he and the PUK leader had met "secretly" with CIA and other US officials in Berlin and the US state of Virginia. "Our meetings with the Americans and others take place in the open. There's no need for secrecy," he said. Talabani and Barzani are known to have met in Germany in mid-April and were said by Kurdish officials to have agreed to complete the implementation of a US-brokered 1998 peace deal between their rival factions. Barzani confirmed there was a chill in the KDP's relations with Turkey "mainly because of its (Ankara's) interference in our internal affairs," but he said both sides had indicated willingness to overcome their differences. He was responding to a question on Turkey's reported opposition to a "federal" solution in Iraq granting the Kurds a form of self-rule. The Kurdish
enclave in northern Iraq has been off-limits to the Baghdad government since
the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and is protected by a Western security
umbrella provided by US and British warplanes.
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