Kurds Want a Top Post in Iraq ( Threaten Boycott of Planned Interim Gov't)

Kurds Want a Top Post in Iraq
Leaders Threaten Boycott of Planned Interim Government
By Robin Wright and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A21


Iraq's Kurdish leaders yesterday told a top U.S. envoy in Iraq that they want one of the two top positions in the new interim government -- president or prime minister -- or the Kurds will not participate in the body that is scheduled to take over when the United States hands over limited authority on June 30, according to Kurdish and U.S. sources.



The Kurds were slated to take a lower position, as one of two vice presidents, in a formula designed by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that the Bush administration hoped to unveil next week. But Jalal Talabani, a veteran Kurdish leader and one of 25 members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, yesterday informed Robert D. Blackwill, the U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq, that the Kurds would not take the job, Kurdish and U.S. sources said.

The move is a setback that complicates U.S. hopes of winning agreement from Iraq's disparate ethnic and religious factions on the makeup of the interim government. Unless the Kurds back down or U.S. and U.N. envoys negotiate a compromise soon, the process of forming a government could drag on longer than expected -- and potentially deepen rivalries, experts on Iraq warn.

The Bush administration hopes that the Kurds are posturing and can eventually be brought around, rather than be blamed for sabotaging the third attempt to form a government.

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more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46474-2004May21.html