jihadunspun.com, Canada
March 23 2005

Kurds Deadlocked In Talks Among US Collaborators On New “Government.”
Mar 23, 2005

By Muhammad Abu Nasr, Free Arab Voice; Edited for Publication by JUS

The meetings of Iraqi collaborationist parties that have been taking
place on the grounds of the area around the Republican Palace, known
to the occupiers as the “green zone”, have reached an impasse in
their efforts to choose a new so-called president and prime minister
to serve as front men for the US occupation regime.

The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam in Baghdad met with Amin
Muhammad, a leader of the Shi’i collaborationist “Islamic Da’wah
Party” and asked him about the latest developments in the on-going
discussions between Kurdish collaborators and Shi’i collaborators;
two groups with distinct sectarian objectives under the umbrella of
the American occupation.

Amin Muhammad told Mafkarat al-Islam that the Kurdish demands were
impossible for any Iraqi, whether Sunni or Shi’i, to accept. Muhammad
said that, for example they want to keep the Peshmergah militia
intact, something all the other group leaders oppose, for they feel
it’s not right to have militias inside a state.

Muhammad said “Then they want Kirkuk to be joined to the northern
region and to be considered a Kurdish city. That is a matter full of
many problems, since Kirkuk is a city with Arabs, Turkmen, Armenians,
and Assyrians too. They also demanded that the natural resources in
the north, the oil and natural gas, be put under Kurdish control, not
under the authority of the Iraqi state. That also is something that
no sect or group in Iraq can accept, whoever they are.”

Muhammad went on, “Another of their conditions is that the Iraqi army
would not be allowed to enter Kurdish territory, while members of the
Kurdish militia would be permitted to enter and move about all the
provinces of Iraq. They insist on getting three sovereign cabinet
posts; namely the foreign ministry, the ministry of defense, and the
ministry of finance, as well as six other ministries. This has
created problems with the other parties.”

“We told them that the Sunnis in Iraq are still silent and if they
speak they will upset the scales altogether. But still they insisted
on those ministries, despite what we told them about how the Sunnis
must be given some ministries. They rejected that argument saying
that the Kurds themselves are Sunnis,” Muhammad said.

Amin Muhammad continued “They are playing all their cards. The
negotiations now, and today in particular, have become deadlocked.”
He added that the Kurdish parties have reservations about Ibrahim
al-Ja’fari becoming Prime Minister, for fear that this would create a
religious state, despite all the assurances of [pro-American Shi’i
religious authority] ‘Ali as-Sistani that he does not believe in the
rule of religious legal scholars. Amin Muhammad said, “that calmed
them down considerably, but they are still not convinced.”