The Role Of Talabani & Regional Reaction.

Talabani has spent a lifetime fighting for Kurdish rights, forming a secret student association at the age of 13 and even taking up arms against the Iraqi government. Now, as president of Iraq, he takes his battle from the green, rolling hills of the Kurdish north to the heavily fortified Green

Talabani was born in 1933 in the rustic Kalkan village 400 km north-east of Baghdad and quickly came under the spell of the Kurdish struggle to carve out a homeland for the hardy mountain people, who are scattered across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. He forswore his dreams of becoming a doctor at the age 15 to study law since he thought it would give him more time to devote to Kurdish politics. He served in the Iraqi army before being inspired to join the KDP of Mullah Mustafa Barzani and took to the hills when the pioneering nationalist hero led a first uprising against Baghdad in 1961. But he fell out with Barzani when he sued for peace with Baghdad, joining a KDP splinter faction in 1964 and fleeing to neighbouring Iran in protest at a ceasefire order. The split was to mark the start of a long and costly internecine feud among Iraqi Kurds.

Talabani formalised the breakaway in 1975, establishing his PUK after the Iraqi army routed Barzani's forces when Iran, the US and Israel abandoned their support. Talabani founded the PUK as an alternative to the KDP, which he described as grounded in tribalism. The rival movements have dominated Kurdish life for four decades. Now Talabani is the first Kurd to be Iraq's president and the first non-Arab president of any Arab state - a sign of the new clout of the Kurdish minority which backed the US-led invasion.

Turkey on April 6 welcomed the election of Talabani, despite its unease about the growing clout of Kurds in its Arab neighbour. (The Kurds make up about 20% of Iraq's population and won 25% of the votes in the Jan. 30 elections. They account for a similar share of Turkey's much larger population). Turkey fears that greater influence for Iraqi Kurds could lead to a strengthening of their autonomy and this could fuel separatism among Turkey's 12m Kurds. Some 30,000 people were killed in Turkey's south-east in the 1980s and 1990s in fighting between Kurds and Turkish forces. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said: "Talabani is an experienced politician. He is somebody who attaches importance to Iraq's territorial unity. For that reason, I congratulate him. I hope members of the new government can be determined in a short time. Turkey will continue to do all it can to provide support and help". Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said he expected the new Iraqi government to ensure that Kirkuk did not fall into solely Kurdish hands.

UAE President Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on April 6 was among the first Arab rulers to send a congratualtory cable to Talabani. UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum sent a similar cable to Talabani.

The Arab League's Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ahmad Ben Hilli said: "The Arab League welcomes the Iraqi National Assembly's choice of a national Iraqi figure, Jalal Talabani, as president".

In their prison cells, Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top aides were given the choice of watching a tape of the session during which Talabani was elected, and all chose to do so, Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said. Saddam watched it by himself. "I imagine he was upset", Amin said of Saddam, adding: "He must have realised that the era of his [Baathist] government was over, and that there was no way he was returning to office".

Talabani's selection set off massive celebrations in Sulaymaniya, the capital of PUK's part of Kurdistan, as crowds took to the streets waving pictures of the 72-year old "Uncle" Jalal. "People are ecstatic. For many, at long last they feel Iraqi, that they are being treated as equals", said Hiwa Osman, a Kurdish journalist. But while some in Baghdad hailed this demonstration of ethnic unity, others said the Kurds had used hard-edged negotiating tactics to force the other parties in government to sell out Iraq's Arab identity. Talabani's acceptance speech seemed designed to appease such sensitivities, emphasising Iraq's "Arab identity", and declaring that the "new Iraq of the people will have a great role in supporting the Palestinian people" - a pan-Arab issue championed by Iraq's previous governments.

Nonetheless, Talabani will have his work cut out trying to mend Arab-Kurdish relations in the months ahead, as parliament takes up issues likely to inflame tensions. One is the flag. Many Kurds say they will never live under a banner flown by the Iraqi army as it invaded their homeland, and call for parliament to change it. For many Arabs, however, the flag has become a symbol of sovereignty and resistance to US domination. Talabani said he would accept the old flag if parliament decided to keep it, but the mere spectacle of Kurds pushing for a change may provoke a backlash.

More dangerous is the issue of Kirkuk, from which the Saddam dictatorship deported thousands of Kurds, Turkomans and other ethnic minorities as part of an "Arabisation" campaign. The Kurds want Kirkuk to join their autonomous Kurdistan, but many Arabs reject what they consider to be a foreign-sponsored plan to split and weaken Iraq.