By NNN-KUNA
Paris : Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has rejected a proposal by France for holding a national conference in Iraq to seek an end to violence between communities there.
“I don’t believe that a national conference is necessary in Iraq,” Talabani said in Thursday’s edition of the French daily Le Monde.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who visited Baghdad in a surprise move last Sunday, had broached the question of a national conference on the lines of initiatives he has undertaken in Lebanon, where he is trying to bring all sides around the same table.
“In Lebanon, the different parties are not capable of speaking to each other or of sitting down at the same table,” the Iraqi president stated. “In Iraq,” he said, “we speak to each other and meet each other every day. Each community takes part in this dialogue. We will get out of this without a conference.”
Talabani blamed the problems inside Iraq on “terrorists who come principally from outside the country, manipulate communities and use their differences to perpetrate their crimes.”
“There is no Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq. There are, it is true, differences. But, above all, divisions within communities themselves,” Talabani remarked.
He said there were even cross-alliances between different elements in the separate communities, even if extremists from each side were fighting each other, and he maintained that the majority of Iraqis were refusing to fight among themselves.
Talabani said that the terrorist attacks were aimed mainly at civilians more than the Iraqi army and police but he stressed these attacks were getting outside “permission.”
On a future political settlement, Talabani, a Kurd, said it was important for Sunni Arabs in Iraq “to reintegrate” into the political process. “We are trying to persuade them to return because without them, the government loses its national unity dimension. They are an important part of this,” the Iraqi leader indicated.
Yet he continued by saying that even if this did not take place, the government would not fall as it had a majority in parliament.
Concerning relations with France and the surprise visit of the French foreign minister last Sunday, Talabani said this was “a historic visit” and the first since Iraq was liberated from the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
He said the visit would contribute to “better understanding” between the two nations.
Talabani said it was now time “to put behind us the period when France had links with the Iraqi dictatorship and to renew relations on a new basis of friendship between the two peoples.”
Asked by Le Monde what Iraq wanted from France, Talabani said there were “numerous areas of cooperation possible,” among them developing reconstruction companies and investing in Iraq’s oil sector.
The Iraqi president said that “French investments in the oil sector are welcome.” He indicated also that France and Iraq spoke in the past about training programmes for Iraqi security personnel and the supply of light weapons for civil protection.
Those proposals were discussed several years ago and France made an offer in that area but it was not taken up by the Iraqi government at the time.
Talabani revealed that President Nicolas Sarkozy had promised when he was French interior minister that he would provide more help for Iraq once he was elected to the presidential office.