Kurdish leader and ex-Iraqi president Talabani dies
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq: Ex-Iraqi president and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani died on Tuesday in Germany, officials in his party told AFP. Talabani, 83, was Iraq’s president from 2005 to 2014 and a key figure in Iraqi Kurdistan, where voters last week overwhelmingly backed independence in a disputed referendum. “Our leader died in Germany,” an official with Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said.
A family member said Talabani’s health had taken a turn for the worse and had been transported to Germany, along with his wife and two children, before the referendum. “We pray to God that his death will help to bring back good relations between the brothers of Iraq.” Iraqi Kurdish lawmaker Zana Said paid tribute to Talabani as “the only president whose death saddens Arabs, Kurds and all other ethnicities”. “We pray to God that his death will help to bring back good relations between the brothers of Iraq.”
Talabani’s death, following a decadesold struggle for Kurdish statehood, came after Iraq’s Kurds voted 92.7 percent in favor of independence in the Sept 25 referendum.
The vote, rejected by Baghdad as illegal, has put deep strain on ties between the Kurds and central Iraqi authorities, who have cut off international flights to the region and threatened further action. Talabani was an avuncular politician and a skilled negotiator, who spent years building bridges between the country’s divided factions, despite his efforts for Kurdish independence.
His wife and companion in political struggle, Hero, and his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party voiced only lukewarm support for the Sept 25 referendum. Unlike Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Massoud Barzani of the rival Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), the PUK has had traditionally good ties with Iran and Iranian-backed Shiite groups which are effectively ruling in Baghdad. The Baghdad government, Iran and Turkey all strongly opposed the referendum.
Born in 1933 in the mountain village of Kalkan, Talabani studied law at Baghdad University and did a stint in the army before joining the KDP of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of current Kurdistan regional president Massoud. Talabani took to the hills in a first uprising against the Iraqi government in 1961 but famously fell out with Barzani, who sued for peace with Baghdad, and joined a KDP splinter faction in 1964.
Eleven years later, he established the PUK after Barzani’s forces, abandoned by their Iranian, US and Israeli allies, were routed by Saddam Hussein’s army. He became president in April 2005 after the first postSaddam election in Iraq and continued in the post until 2014, when he was replaced by the current president, Fuad Masoum. Iraq’s head of state plays a largely ceremonial role and is elected by members of parliament.
In Aug 2008, the married father of two underwent successful heart surgery in the United States, then in 2012 he was flown to Germany after suffering a stroke, casting doubt over his ability to ever return to Iraq. He did go back in July 2014, with Iraq in crisis after the Islamic State group had taken control of swathes of the country, and was replaced by Masoum following a parliamentary election. — Agencies