ARBIL, Iraq, 19 March 2004 — Iraqi Kurds have no intention of splitting Iraq or stirring up trouble among Kurds in neighboring countries, their leaders said yesterday.

“Some Arabs think federalism is a step toward dividing Iraq. Federalism is a way to divide power between a central administration and a local government,” said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

He was addressing a conference on Arab-Kurdish dialogue taking place against a backdrop of controversy in Iraq over Kurdish autonomy demands, and unrest among Kurds in Syria.

Masoud Barzani, head of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said Kurdish parties had never tried to win their rights at the expense of Arabs or other political parties in Iraq.

“We want to have an Iraqi, unified, pluralistic and federal government,” he told the same conference.

The PUK and KDP have ruled northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War and Kurds are loath to risk their relative security and prosperity by being ruled directly from Baghdad again.

Asked about neighboring countries’ fears that their Kurdish minorities might be inspired by Iraqi Kurd gains, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, also a senior KDP member, said events were interconnected, “but Syrian problems are an internal affair.”

Iraqi Kurds were focused on their own fate and had no “extra-territorial plans,” he told reporters in Baghdad.

Up to 30 people have been killed in unrest in northeastern Syria since a soccer match clash last Friday.

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said it was natural the recognition of Kurdish rights in Iraq’s interim constitution would encourage Kurds in nearby countries to seek their own rights.

“But the Kurds in Syria were celebrating, they weren’t asking for anything. The incidents show that there is a Kurdish question in Syria which has to be solved,” he said.

Othman said Turkey, Syria and Iran were “chauvinistic” on Kurdish issues. “They want an excuse to create problems for us. We don’t want to see an escalation happening there.”

He acknowledged many Iraqi Kurds had more radical ambitions than those espoused by their main political parties.

“Kurds are a people who ask for more than their leaders ask for, but we have to deal with realpolitik,” he said. “There are people who are dissatisfied but they understand what we are working at.”

Biyrar Osman, a reporter for Kurdish television in Arbil, said Kurdish nationalism had gone beyond the control of the PUK and the KDP. “The two parties are not representing people’s voices. Everybody is asking for independence,” he said.