Iraq government talks resume in Kurdish mountains

[stop the bleeding]

DUKAN, Iraq (Reuters) -

Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite politician met its Kurdish president at a lakeside retreat on Thursday to sketch out plans for a grand coalition government after an election that left rival factions fiercely at odds.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim arrived in the mountain resort of Dukan in the Kurdish north for talks with President Jalal Talabani amid growing concern it could be many weeks before a viable government emerges after disputes over the poll results.

Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq sits in a Shi'ite Islamist coalition that appears to have dominated the vote. The coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), wants to press on with forming a government and has insisted it should choose the next prime minister.

But Sunni and secular politicians say the election was fraudulent and have demanded a rerun, at least in key areas like Baghdad where the UIA did surprisingly well. Tens of thousands of angry Sunnis have marched through cities across Iraq to contest the vote.
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12/29/2005 Iraq government talks resume in Kurdish mountains -Twana Osman, Reuters - news.yahoo.com

[jfkraus]

1. Kurds quietly ready for civil war

From http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002709442_kurd29.html

Kurds quietly ready for civil war

KIRKUK, Iraq — Iraq's Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

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[stop the bleeding]

2. Welcome to DU

:toast:

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3. With Israel's help?

Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the region has been strengthened by the war. The Israeli operatives include members of the Mossad, Israel’s clandestine foreign-intelligence service, who work undercover in Kurdistan as businessmen and, in some cases, do not carry Israeli passports.

Asked to comment, Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said, “The story is simply untrue and the relevant governments know it’s untrue.” Kurdish officials declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the State Department.

However, a senior C.I.A. official acknowledged in an interview last week that the Israelis were indeed operating in Kurdistan. He told me that the Israelis felt that they had little choice: “They think they have to be there.” Asked whether the Israelis had sought approval from Washington, the official laughed and said, “Do you know anybody who can tell the Israelis what to do? They’re always going to do what is in their best interest.” The C.I.A. official added that the Israeli presence was widely known in the American intelligence community.

The Israeli decision to seek a bigger foothold in Kurdistan—characterized by the former Israeli intelligence officer as “Plan B”—has also raised tensions between Israel and Turkey. It has provoked bitter statements from Turkish politicians and, in a major regional shift, a new alliance among Iran, Syria, and Turkey, all of which have significant Kurdish minorities. In early June, Intel Brief, a privately circulated intelligence newsletter produced by Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. counterterrorism chief, and Philip Giraldi, who served as the C.I.A.’s deputy chief of base in Istanbul in the late nineteen-eighties, said:

New Yorker article