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news
headlines
Bomb
in Iraqi Kurdistan kills boy, 4, wounds two others: police
Bahceli: Barzani's Statement Is Unacceptable How Kurdistan's first suicide bomber changed his mind Interrogations link Al Qaeda to Iraq Two hundred Iraqi Kurdish immigrants land in southern Italy Turkey, Iraqi Kurdish Tensions High Jalal Talabani Interview with Asharq Al-Awsat Iraqi Kurd Fighters Seen More Organized Iranian troops deployed on Iraqi border: Kurds Saddam's son says Iran not al-Qaeda behind Kurdistan Islamist group KDP Slams Berlin Embassy Seizure as "Terrorism" Barham Salih: The Radical group Ansar al-Islam Plans Attacks Talabani Wants US Date for Post-Saddam Poll U.S. Monitors Kurdish Extremists raq orders banks to be opened in Kurdistan Saddam will not stop me being a Kurd
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Iraqi Kurdish
factions to reunify enclave and agree on federal system: PUK
KUWAIT CITY, Sept 19 (AFP) The two main Kurdish factions sharing control of northern Iraq will start a process of reunifying the enclave at a meeting of their joint parliament next month, the leader of one of the groups said in remarks published Thursday. The revived parliament will discuss unifying the two governments and administrations, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) chief Jalal Talabani told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas. The assembly, which will convene on October 4, is also expected to announce agreement on a "federal" Iraq, Talabani said. The PUK chief, who was referring to Kurdish proposals for a federal system in Iraq that would preserve the autonomy enjoyed since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, argued that such an arrangement would bolster, rather than undermine, Iraq's unity. The reactivation of the Kurdish parliament was one of the main clauses of a September 8 accord between Talabani and Massoud Barzani, whose Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is the other main faction in the enclave, under which they set up four joint committees to complete implementation of a US-brokered 1998 peace deal. The assembly, which will meet in KDP-controlled Arbil, 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. The Kurdish enclave has been off limits to Baghdad since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Talabani, who spoke to Al-Qabas in his stronghold of Suleimaniya before Baghdad's announcement that it would after all readmit UN arms inspectors, said he expected a US military strike against Iraq "after Ramadan," the Muslim fasting month which this year falls in November. During meetings between senior US officials and Iraqi opposition leaders in Washington in August, "they told us: we have decided to change the Iraqi regime (of President Saddam Hussein) and we will do it," Talabani said.
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