SALAHADDIN, Iraq, 2 March 2003 — A bid by Iraqi opposition groups to stake their claim to the future leadership of a post-Saddam Hussein government has ended in an acrimonious showdown with the United States, officials revealed yesterday. As opposition officials were struggling to wrap up four days of key talks in Kurdish rebel-held northern Iraq, delegates revealed there had been an angry exchange with a US envoy over Washington’s plans to install a military government, control the country’s oil fields and allow in Turkish troops.
With US-opposition relations in disarray and the dissidents here still battling their own divisions, all indications were pointing to a difficult task ahead for the United States after it invades the country. Top of the list of arguments between many top delegates and Zalmay Khalilzad, President George W. Bush’s hawkish point man on regime change, was a US plan to place an American commander in charge of Iraq for an interim period.
“Khalilzad mentioned that a military governor will rule Iraq because we were not ready,” said Warith Al-Kindi, an information officer with the Supreme Assembly for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the main faction representing the country’s majority Shiite community. “So we told him that if America thinks it was treated badly in Somalia, how does it think it will be treated in Iraq? After all these years of suffering, why should we live under foreign occupation?” he asked.
Al-Kindi accused Washington of trying to pressure the opposition into giving prominent positions to pro-Israeli delegates, agreeing to US protection of Iraq’s oil fields and playing down the role of Islam in any future political or legal system.
Another close aide to SAIRI chief delegate Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim described former oil man Khalilzad as a “bully”. The US envoy had told delegates a future government had to include “those who have suffered under Saddam,” the aide said, expressing concern that that meant inclusion of regime insiders in a post-Saddam administration. Late on Friday, Khalilzad was whisked away from this hilltop town by his team of heavily-armed diplomatic security guards. Opposition spokesman Hoshyar Zebari attempted to put a brave face on the departure but acknowledged that he did not know whether it was final. The other major sticking point with the United States was over Turkey.
On Friday, there has been an angry outburst by a leading member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Sami Abdul Rahman, who said that any US-Turkey deal allowing a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq — in return for Washington being granted a key second front — would amount to a “betrayal” and meet stiff resistance. “In my lifetime, twice the United States government has betrayed us,” Abdul Rahman said, referring to the catastrophic Kurdish uprisings of 1975 and 1991. “Now, if this goes ahead, it will be a third betrayal in one generation.”
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters gathered in the Turkish capital yesterday to protest a possible war in neighboring Iraq and the likely approval by Parliament, later in the day, of the deployment of over 60,000 US soldiers in the country. Some 20,000 people showed up at Sihhiye square in downtown Ankara, making the rally one of the largest anti-war protest in Turkey to date, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.
Hundreds of riot police and several armored cars blocked a main road leading to the Parliament where deputies were set to debate a motion to allow US troops into Turkey for a possible war. It was the first major public manifestation of widespread opposition to a war most Turks see as an unjustified and potentially disastrous attack on a neighbor. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has already deferred the parliamentary vote from Thursday amid widespread concerns about the impact of any war on Turkey’s borders, further delaying US military preparations. AKP leader Tayyip Erdogan said he saw no prospect of the motion being withdrawn yesterday. The resolution would also authorize Turkey’s own army to move into northern Iraq for an incursion Turkey says aims to prevent a humanitarian disaster and block any moves by Iraqi Kurds to use a war to set up their own state.
