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Barzani calls for a Federal Democratic Parliamentary State in Iraq.
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Blast
Wounds 20 in Iraqi Kurdistan, Islamist Militants Suspected
AFP June 27, 2002 A bomb blast has wounded 20 people in northern Iraq, a spokesman for the party controlling the Kurdish region said Thursday, pointing a finger of blame at Islamist militants. "The bomb went off Wednesday evening in Brosek public park in downtown Arbil," regional capital of the area controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said the KDP's international relations chief Hoshyar Zebari. "Twenty civilians were wounded. Their injuries were minor, except for a 12-year-old boy who sustained serious injuries," he told AFP by telephone from London. "We have no hard evidence about who carried out this terrorist act and investigations are continuing. But to plant a bomb in a public park is pure terrorism," Zebari said. "In the past, Islamist militants, or terrorists, have been responsible for this kind of explosion ... "But we also don't rule out the possibility that it was carried out by other quarters who have a vested interest in destabilizing the northern region," which has been off-limits to the Baghdad government since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, he added. Zebari, whose faction shares control of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said there had been no arrests in connection with Wednesday's explosion or two blasts on June 7 in Arbil province that left two people slightly wounded. A KDP official also told AFP on June 14 that "Islamist extremists" were suspected of being behind those blasts. Zebari denied that Kurdish officials were playing up an alleged "Islamist threat" in a bid to gain US sympathy. "It's not a question of gaining US sympathy. These Islamist groups are a homegrown phenomenon, and many countries in the region are afflicted by this disease," he said. KDP leader Massoud Barzani and PUK chief Jalal Talabani agreed during a meeting in Germany in mid-April to pool resources to combat Islamist radicals they say are operating in the Western-protected Kurdish enclave. Talabani's 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 admitted to having had links with the al-Qaeda terror network, which Washington blames for the September 11 attacks, and having received training in Afghanistan.
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