(more good news from Iraq) U. N. is unanimous with us and the Iraq Resolution...

Great great step. Keep it up Bush please. It will help in November/

 

Screw November. I think this is some good news regardless of one's political leanings. I hope it makes a difference in Iraq.

 

How do you feel about animal costumes? Nothing fancy... I mean just normal, mascot kinds of things.

 

oh god bob yer talking to the squirrel king

right rox?

I too think this is great news!

 

more good news? I haven't heard many good news lately. All I hear in the news is that American soldiers are being killed almost everyday. I hope this is a step in the right direction though, cuz for someone like me who has a relative in Iraq(cousin), almost everyday is bad news day.

 

I think we all hope that the promise of this resolution is fulfilled and things work in the best way possible.

 

It is refreshing that our leader has FINALLY tried to enlist the aid of the world community.

 

Hey,

Maybe they did have a plan after all.



Good news !!

DD

 

They should have done it 6 months or more ago.

 

Seems not everyone is happy with the resolution...

The Resolution's Weakness

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

In his eagerness for the approval of the Shiite religious leader — and driven by desperation to get yesterday's unanimous U.N. resolution in time for the G-8 meeting — President Bush may be double-crossing the Kurds, our most loyal friends in Iraq.

Not a single U.S. soldier has been killed in the area of northern Iraq patrolled by the pesh merga, the army of Kurdish Iraqis who have brought order to their region. Savaged by Saddam's poison-gas attacks in the 80's, Kurdistan was abandoned by the first President Bush to Saddam's vengeance after the first gulf war. When our conscience made us provide air cover in the 90's, the Kurds amazed the Middle East by creating a free, democratic mini-state within despotic Iraq.

These Kurdish Sunni Muslims — an ancient ethnic group, neither Arab nor Turk — are one-fifth of Iraq's population. They cheered our arrival and set aside old dreams of independence, asking for reasonable autonomy in return for participating enthusiastically in the formation of the new Iraq.

In February, the Iraqi Governing Council, which included all religious and ethnic groups, hammered out its only memorable work: a Transitional Administrative Law, which laid the groundwork for a constitution to be adopted later by elected officials in a sovereign state. Most important for Kurds, who have long been oppressed by an Arab majority, it established minority rights within a federal state — the essence of a stable democracy.

But as the U.N. resolution supporting that state was nearing completion, the Shiite grand ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, suddenly intervened. He denounced the agreed-upon law as "legislated by an unelected council in the shadow of occupation." He decreed that mentioning it in the U.N. resolution would be "a harbinger of grave consequences."

The U.S. promptly caved. Stunned Kurds protested in a letter to President Bush that "the people of Kurdistan will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq." If the law guaranteeing minority rights was abrogated, Kurds would "have no choice but to refrain from participating in the central government, not to take part in the national elections, and to bar representatives of the central government from Kurdistan."

Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leaders, appealed to Bush's sense of loyalty: "We will be loyal friends to America even if our support is not always reciprocated. . . . If the forces of freedom [do not] prevail elsewhere in Iraq, we know that, because of our alliance with the United States, we will be marked for vengeance."

I ran this pained appeal past John Negroponte, who will move from his post as our U.N. representative to be our ambassador to the new Iraq, at his farewell lunch yesterday. He pointed to a line in the preamble to the U.N. resolution welcoming an unspecified commitment "to work towards a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq, in which there is full respect for political and human rights."

Fine "preambular" words, but outside the action section of the resolution. That eviscerates the protective law, just as Sistani demanded.

Why do we take our proven allies for granted? The conventional White House wisdom holds that the Iraqi Kurds have no place else to go. It's an article of faith that if the Kurds tried to break away and set up an independent Kurdistan, with oil-rich Kirkuk as its traditional capital, Turkey, on its border, would never permit it — lest murderous separatists among its own Kurdish population of 12 million get a new lease on death.

Iraqi Kurds blundered last year in letting old grudges prevent Ankara from sending 10,000 troops south to help the coalition police Iraq. But since then, Kurdish leaders have gone all-out to establish economic and political relations with "our friends to the north."

A Turkish construction company is building a $40 million airport in Sulaimaniya, and Kurds have been steering contracts to Turkish engineers to study sports stadiums and tunnels through the mountains. Despite grumbling from some anti-Kurdish generals, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been responsive. The influential Ilnur Cevik of the Turkish Daily News urges "more attention to Iraqi Kurdish sensitivities" and asks: "Do the Arabs realize what they are getting into?"

Our Kurdish allies will do their bit to hold Iraq together. But in appeasing the south, don't push the north too far.

 

More on the Kurds


Kurds Threaten to Bolt Iraq Government

By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kurdish parties warned Wednesday that they might bolt Iraq (news - web sites)'s new government if Shiites gain too much power. In another challenge to the interim administration, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline, forcing a 10 percent cut in electricity output.

Kurdish fears of Shiite domination rose after the Americans and British turned down their request to have a reference to the interim constitution — which enshrines Kurdish federalism — included in the U.N. resolution approved Tuesday.

The country's most prominent Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, warned he would not accept mention of the interim charter in the resolution. Shiites oppose parts of the charter that give Kurds a veto over a permanent constitution due to be drawn up next year.

Meanwhile, clashes persisted Wednesday around Fallujah, a rebellious Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad. Four members of an Iraqi force given control of the city last April were wounded when a mortar round exploded.

The pipeline attack appeared to be part of an insurgent campaign against infrastructure to shake confidence in the new government, due to take power on June 30.

The blast occurred about 9:30 a.m. near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, said Col. Sarhat Qadir of the Kirkuk police. Huge fireballs rose into the air, witnesses said.

Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told Dow Jones Newswires that the attack would not affect exports from the northern oil fields. However, the blast cut supplies to the Beiji electric power station, forcing a reduction of 400 megawatts in power generation, Jihad said.

Iraq now produces around 4,000 megawatts. Power cuts in the country have now reached more than 16 hours a day, making it difficult to cope with soaring heat, which is already more than 100 degrees.

The U.S.-run coalition had made its ability to guarantee adequate electricity supplies a benchmark of success in restoring normalcy to Iraq. However, sabotage and frayed infrastructure have impeded efforts to eliminate power outages, especially in the capital.

Coalition officials fear that insurgents may step up attacks on infrastructure targets to undermine public confidence both in the U.S. occupation authority and the new regime.

Both major Kurdish parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — conferred Wednesday to consider a response to the decision not to refer to the interim constitution in the U.N. resolution. The interim charter, adopted in March, affirms the principle of federalism and gave the Kurds an effective veto over the permanent constitution to be drafted next year.

Kurds fear that the interim constitution, which the Americans hailed as the most progressive in the Middle East, will be sidelined once the occupation ends and the Shiite clergy gains ascendancy.

The Kurds have been running their own autonomous mini-state since 1991, and many Kurds would prefer their own independent country.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought to reassure the Kurds, saying that while the resolution doesn't refer to the constitution, it "does have language that refers to a united federal democratic Iraq."

Diplomats said reference to the interim constitution was omitted because of opposition by al-Sistani. Shiites are believed to compromise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million while Kurds number around 15 percent.

In a statement addressed to the U.N. Security Council earlier this week, al-Sistani warned that mentioning the interim charter in the resolution would be "an act against the will of the Iraqi people and will have dangerous results."

He denounced the charter, saying it was "put in place by an unelected council, under the shadow of occupation" — referring to the U.S.-picked Governing Council that approved it.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the first Kurd to hold the post, said he had lobbied unsuccessfully for an acknowledgment of the charter during his meetings at the Security Council last week.

But he said he was satisfied that the "spirit" of the charter was in the final resolution.

Still, Kurdish leaders in Iraq were unconvinced.

"Now our future is ambiguous," said Nesreen Berwari, a Kurdish member of the interim government. "The interim constitution would have been the clear and bright roadmap to the all components of the Iraqi people."

Berwari said she would resign if asked to do so by the Kurdish leadership.

"Until now, we have not called for a separate Kurdistan, but if the Kurds' rights are not recognized, then we will take political measures that serve the interests of the Kurdish people," said Mulaha Bekhtiyar of the PUK. "For the time being, we will commit to a united Iraq."

 

Hopefully they will come to a fair compromise very soon with the Kurds like they did in February.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59014-2004Feb20.html