Telephone Lines Cut off from  Kirkuk's Kurdish Districts 

Suspicions are centered on "Islamist extremists" in two recent bomb blasts in the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq that left two people slightly wounded, an Iraqi Kurdish spokesman said Friday.
"The bombs exploded last Friday (June 7) in the summer resorts of Shaklawa and Shallal Ali Bek" in the northern province of Arbil, which is under the control of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the KDP's London representative Dilshad Miran told AFP by telephone.

Miran said investigations into the minor blasts were still ongoing, but they followed a pattern of bomb explosions in Iraqi Kurdistan in recent months for which "extremist Islamist elements" were found to be responsible.

Such attacks targeted perceived "un-Islamic" manifestations, such as shops that sell alcohol and beauty salons, he said.

He said that while local authorities had still not determined who was responsible for last week's blasts in popular resorts, the purpose of the attacks against "soft targets" was clearly to "spread fear and confusion in the area."

The KDP shares control of northern Iraq, which has been off limits to the Baghdad government since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

KDP leader Massoud Barzani and PUK chief Jalal Talabani agreed during a meeting in Germany in mid-April to pool their two factions' resources to combat Islamist radicals they say are operating in the Western-protected Kurdish enclave.

The PUK has clashed in recent months with Islamic radicals based in the part of Iraqi Kurdistan it controls, pushing them back to the mountainous Biara region bordering Iran.

A PUK spokesman told AFP last month that an outfit calling itself "Ansar al-Islam" (Supporters of Islam) comprises a number of groupings, including 200-to-300 members of the so-called "Jund al-Islam" (Soldiers of Islam).

The spokesman added that some of the members admit to having links with the al-Qaeda "terror" network, which Washington blames for the September 11 attacks, and having received training in Afghanistan from "terror" groups.

However, critics accuse Kurdish officials of playing up the Al-Qaeda link in a bid to win further US support and protection.

The KDP's Miran said his group and the PUK had been "fully cooperating" in the fight against extremists through a joint operations center they have set up.

In the past, the KDP and PUK often fought each other for predominance in the Kurdish north, but Barzani and Talabani agreed at their Germany meeting to complete the implementation of a 1998 US-brokered peace deal between their two factions. 
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