IRAQ: Kurdish leader talks about Turkey and the prospects for peace

The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been battling Turkey for an independent Kurdish state since the 1970s. Now Turkey has promised to come up with a plan to give Kurds more political rights in a bid to end the conflict. At the PKK's main camp in the remote Qandil mountains in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, the PKK leader, Murat Karayilan, spoke to Babylon and Beyond about the PKK's suspicions of the Turkish offer.

Q: Turkey has shown a willingness to resolve the Kurdish issue. How do you read the situation?

A: We are serious, and we want to resolve the Kurdish issue in Turkey, and we are working towards peace. We want to solve the issue by dialogue, away from violence and the use of weapons. If Turkey is serious and has true intentions about peace, there must be an initial step of good faith to stop the ongoing military operations against our soldiers and our bases inside Turkey.  To begin with, there should be a halt to military operations against us, then dialogue and negotiation, and then we will start talking about giving up our weapons. Any solution or peace initiative to give up our weapons will be considered at the end, not the beginning.

I see a number of politicians demanding that we should abandon our armed struggle, but they do not talk about the Turkish side and the military operations they carry out against us. On the ground, we feel their agenda is unclear and they don't have a road map.

IRAQ: Disputes over Kirkuk delay new election law

The thorny question of how to organize voting in the disputed province of Kirkuk is threatening to undermine the integrity of crucial national elections that the U.S. military hopes will pave the way for a mass drawdown of American troops.

The Iraqi parliament today missed a second presumed deadline for passing an election law to regulate the poll, scheduled for January, because of the dispute over voting procedures in the oil-rich province, which is claimed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans.

At issue is the question of whether all the current residents of Kirkuk should be eligible to vote. In recent years, thousands of Kurds have moved into the area from Kurdistan, supposedly to reverse the Arabization policies of Saddam Hussein, who expelled Kurds and settled Arabs there.

But Arabs and Turkomans say the Kurdish influx has far exceeded the expulsion of Kurds during the Hussein era and that special measures needed to be taken to avoid the Kurds having an unfair advantage in Kirkuk.

Various proposals have been mooted, including one suggested by the U.N. that would pre-assign the province's 13 seats to Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman candidates. Another proposal suggests dividing Kirkuk into regions in such a way as to guarantee representation to Turkomans and Arabs as well as Kurds.

But in negotiations today, the Kurds said they would reject any special arrangement for Kirkuk as anti-constitutional and instead proposed the formation of a committee to vet voter registration lists in all Iraq's provinces -- something that could prove a lengthy exercise.

TURKEY: Signs of progress in making peace with Kurds

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with the Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk Wednesday suggesting a move towards reconciliation between the government and the main Kurdish political group, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which Turk chairs, according to a report in the  Hurriyet newspaper. 

"We are in the middle of a process, and I believe our hopes for the future have increased with today’s meeting," Erdogan told reporters.  

Erdogan had refused to meet with the DTP since the 2007 elections because it did not condemn militant activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Turkey and the United States consider the militant group a terrorist organization.  

The government's so-called "Kurdish move" is an attempt to resolve decades-old tensions between Kurds, who constitute at least a 12 million-strong minority in Turkey, and the Turkish government.

Erdogan's government has been promoting the initiative under the banner of "greater democratization."  

Turk expressed similar sentiment saying, "We hope and wish to see positive developments for a more democratic process that everybody embraces with love."  

IRAQ: Interview with Kurdish candidate Barham Salih, deputy prime minister

The Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who have jointly ruled Kurdistan for the last 18 years, are facing the first real political challenge to their monopoly on power in Saturday's regional government elections. A newly formed opposition movement called Change has galvanized Kurds frustrated with high levels of corruption and poor services, and hopes to win a sizable number of seats.

On the eve of the poll, the Los Angeles Times sat down with the PUK's Barham Salih, Iraq's deputy prime minister, who heads a joint PUK-KDP list of candidates known as the Kurdistani list. If the list wins, it is likely he will become the region's next prime minister. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Q: You're facing a big challenge from the Change movement. Are you worried?

A: For parties who have been in power for 18 years, one has to expect that there will be big challenges. People have certain questions, legitimate questions. There is opposition that is trying to ride a wave of discontent, displeasure with some of the shortcomings of the situation. So it is definitely a challenge.

But I think we have conducted a very good campaign. We have managed to convey a message that what we have achieved so far is impressive … and that the platform we have adopted is a reformist platform that will take care of the shortcomings and some of the problems that we encountered.

The most important thing is that the process is competitive and proves the maturity of the Kurdish democratic process. I am very hopeful that this will have implications for Kurdish politics, for Iraqi politics and will establish pluralistic democracy in a far more profound way than we have seen in the past.

Q: You admit that there have been shortcomings in the performance of the current government. What are they?

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IRAQ: Stars gather for concert in Kurdistan

Before a crowd of about 3,000 people, a group featuring some of world music's best-known performers -- including drummer Tariq Snare, all the way from Brooklyn, Iranian musician Sohrab Pournazeri (shown above playing the kamancheh) and multi-instrumentalist Matthaios Tsahourides of Greece -- played in Kurdistan on Friday. "Our group includes four different nationalities, and this event expresses the dialogue among different cultures," said Hussain Zahawy of Kurdistan, who plays the frame drum.

"Each state has its own culture and traditions, but after all, we are all human," Tsahourides said. See more pictures of the show below.

IRAQ: Gay-sex story lands writer in jail

A court in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region has sentenced a freelance journalist to six months in prison and a fine for writing an article about gay sex, a penalty that media groups say violates the law and underscores the lack of press freedom in Kurdistan.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, groups that monitor press freedom across the world, are among the international organizations demanding the release of Adel Hussein, who was arrested Nov. 24 in the Kurdish city of Irbil. "I find the verdict strange," said Kamal Raoof, the editor of the Kurdish newspaper Hawlati, which published Hussein's story. "The government claims there is freedom in the region."

Hussein, whose article appeared in Hawlati in April 2007, is the second Kurdish journalist to land in prison in the past month. On Nov. 8, the editor in chief of the Hawal newspaper, Shwan Dawoody, was given a month in jail and a fine for a series of stories his paper ran that were critical of the judiciary in Sulaymaniya, which is part of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.

The court that sentenced Hussein, who is a doctor specializing in sexual and reproductive diseases, said he had violated "public custom" by writing about health issues related to gay sex. But Hussein's lawyer and the Kurdistan Journalists' Union said the court relied upon a 1969 law that was recently superseded by a law protecting press freedom and banning the jailing of journalists.

Raoof said Hussein's story was scientific, not prurient, and did not encourage homosexual behavior, as the court suggested. Homosexuality is taboo across Iraq, including in Kurdistan, and anyone seen as promoting it or practicing it is liable to be shunned by society, or worse. 

In its most recent report on human rights in Iraq, the United Nations took aim at Kurdistan for violating freedom-of-expression guarantees. The report, released a few days after Hussein's arrest and sentence, said the U.N. "continued to receive reports of intimidation and/or arrests of media professionals in the Kurdistan region, in particular those who had reported on issues of public interest."

-- Asso Ahmed in Sulaymaniya

IRAQ: Turkey's fight with Kurdish separatists

A separatist Kurdish leader sounded defiant this week after Turkey's parliament authorized more attacks against his group in northern Iraq. "We are ready and our forces are ready. We are not afraid of them. If they want to attack Iraq's Kurdistan, then the Middle East will turn into a fire ball,” Bozan Takeen, a senior leader from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), warned on Thursday by phone from his hideout in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Takeen, who is based in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Qandil mountains, which border Turkey and Iran, was speaking after Turkey’s parliament on Wednesday extended for one more year Ankara’s right to carry out military raids against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan.

IRAQ: U.N. looks to solve Kirkuk problem

The United Nations is pressing ahead with its mission to find a solution for Iraq's troubled northern region, where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen are in a fight for land and power. Nothing is more prized than the mixed-city of Kirkuk and its province, which sits atop oil reserves. 

The head of the UN mission in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, said the United Nations aimed to present its ideas on how to settle the competition for Kirkuk in September or October.  "We are pushing for a grand deal, looking at the whole area," de Mistura said Tuesday. "Our aim is to draw up options by October, which if all Iraqi parties work consistently on those, could provide a peaceful political solution, which eventually may be confirmed or sanctioned through a confirmatory referendum." 

In Iraq's world of intractable politics it is an open question whether the various sides will seize upon the United Nations' ideas. Last December, as the deadline passed for an Iraqi referendum on Kirkuk's fate, the Iraqi government accepted the United Nations proposal to present possible solutions regarding the volatile city. 

All sides have refused to budge on Kirkuk. Arabs and Turkmen are violently opposed to a referendum in Kirkuk. They believe the Kurds have brought strangers down to live in the city in order to rig such a vote.

The United Nations assembled a team of 15 advisors to survey the disputed areas in northern Iraq and to propose compromises that could break the deadlock over the referendum. The team also is surveying contested lands in Nineveh, Salahaddin and Diyala provinces.

The tensions are a legacy of the late dictator Saddam Hussein's policy of expelling Kurds and settling Arabs in strategic areas. The United Nations produced its first assessment in June on disputed lands, which covered the areas of Mahmour, Akre and Hamdaniya in Nineveh province, as well as Mandeli in Diyala. The study was criticized by the Kurds. However, it remains to be seen whether Iraqi politicians will be more receptive to the United Nations' suggestions in the future.

-- Ned Parker in Baghdad

IRAN: Report says U.S. waging secret war

An explosive article by veteran New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh alleges that the U.S. has secretly allocated up to $400 million to run covert operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Hersh alleges that the Bush administration is funding Iranian Arab and Baluchi militant groups as well other groups including possible Kurdish rebels and the Mujahedin Khalq, or MKO, a cult-like militant group with offices in Paris and fighters in Iraq that opposes the Islamic Republic. The money was also to be used to dig up intel on Iran's nuclear program, a source of major friction between Tehran and the West.

The report alleges that the Bush administration briefed Congressional leaders about the stepped up activity late last year.

"Clandestine operations against Iran are not new," Hersh writes, in a report that will appear in the July 7 and 14 issue of the New Yorker. "But the scale and the scope of the operations ... have now been significantly expanded."