Iraq's president Jalal Talabani, a key ally of the US, yesterday delivered a thunderous rejection of the bipartisan US Iraq Study Group, describing its findings as "dangerous" and saying that its recommendations were "dead in the water".At his heavily fortified residence on the banks of the Tigris, Mr Talabani told the Guardian that the key suggestions of the long-awaited report by James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton were "the wrong medicine for the wrong diagnosis" and called them an unwarranted interference in Iraq's internal affairs that undermined the war-torn country's sovereignty at a crucial time. "As far as I am concerned it is dead in the water," he said.
| Mr Talabani added that calls for US sanctions against the Iraqi government if it failed to meet a timeline for a series of milestones were "an insult". |
Launched last week amid much fanfare in the United States, the bipartisan report on the next step for the US in Iraq outlined among other things the "grave and deteriorating situation" in the country. It expressed deep concern over the weakness of the national unity government, advocating strong centralised rule.
Mr Talabani's strident response followed another weekend of sectarian-inspired violence in Baghdad and a surprise farewell visit to US troops in Iraq by the outgoing US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief architects of the US-led invasion.
The findings of the Iraq Study Group have already met considerable vocal opposition in Iraq, but Mr Talabani's comments are the loudest so far. The head of the Kurdistan Alliance, Mr Talabani is one of the country's most influential figures, a broker among the feuding factions in Baghdad. His vehement opposition to the report could be decisive.
| "To hear such comments from anti-US figures like Moqtada al-Sadr is one thing, but to hear it from President Talabani is something else." |
The Iraqi president said he would send a letter to President George Bush outlining the government's thinking about "the main issues" contained in the Baker-Hamilton document.
| We have many former Iraqi army officers, good patriotic professional army men who were against Saddam Hussein. Why can't we bring those people to the army, to help train and develop and lead?" |
But a clearly agitated Mr Talabani said: "They want to embed thousands more US army officers in Iraqi army units from small squadrons to whole divisions. If our army became a tool in the hands of foreign officers, what would that say about Iraqi sovereignty? We have many former Iraqi army officers, good patriotic professional army men who were against Saddam Hussein. Why can't we bring those people to the army, to help train and develop and lead?"