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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
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Iraqi Kurds push
peace deal ahead of parliament meeting
SULEIMANIYA, (Southern Kurdistan), Sept 15 (AFP) The two main Kurdish factions sharing control of northern Iraq met Sunday to speed up the implementation of a peace deal ahead of the revival of their joint parliament, an official said. The political bureaus of Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), meeting in PUK-held Koi Sanjak, discussed a "mechanism of action" for the four joint committees set up under the deal signed by Talabani and Barzani on September 8, the PUK official said. One committee is charged with following up the "normalization of ties" between the parties, including the reopening of each group's offices in the part of the Kurdish enclave under the other's control and the return to their homes of people displaced during past strife between the rival Kurdish groups. Another committee is charged with formulating a joint view on a future federal Iraq, a third with "unifying positions on threats to the security" of the enclave, and a fourth with formulating a common policy toward regional and world powers, the official said. The agenda of the committees will be put to the regional parliament when it convenes on October 4 in KDP-controlled Arbil. One of the main clauses of the September 8 accord provided for the "reactivation" of the Kurdish parliament elected in 1992, which is split evenly between the KDP and PUK but has not convened with all its members since 1996 when fighting between the two sides reached its peak. Last week's accord was designed to complete implementation of a 1998 US-brokered peace deal between the two factions at a time when the United States is threatening to launch a military strike aimed at overthrowing the regime of President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. The Kurdish enclave has been off limits to Baghdad since the 1991 Gulf War. In an interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas published Sunday, Barzani said the planned reactivation of the joint parliament was the main outstanding provision of the 1998 agreement, which constituted the "basis" of ties between the two factions. Barzani, who briefly aligned himself with the Iraqi government during the 1996 clashes with the PUK, said the KDP's links with Baghdad were dictated by the fact that "we live in Iraq, and whether we like it or not, there must be links." But he said these were of a "commercial and social," not political or security, nature. The KDP chief warned
both Iran and Turkey that intervention in Iraq in the event of a US strike would
be "costly" and backfire on their own security and stability.
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