BAGHDAD, Dec 10: President Jalal Talabani, a long-time US ally, made a stinging attack on the controversial Iraq Study Group report on Sunday, calling it “dangerous” and insulting to Iraqi sovereignty.
The report's recommendations were also implicitly criticised by the outgoing US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who paid a defiant farewell visit to US troops and urged them to stay the course, the Pentagon reported on Sunday.
Four days after the release of the report, which was hailed by many US lawmakers and commentators as pointing to a way out of the Iraq crisis, Talabani invited journalists to his Baghdad villa to denounce it.
“If you read this report one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing conditions on, neglecting the fact that we are a sovereign country, and respected,” he said.
The president was angered by the recommendation that more US troops be directly assigned to Iraqi army units, demanding instead that Prime Minister Maliki be given full command of all Iraqi forces. “As a whole, I reject this report,” he said. “I think that the Baker-Hamilton report is not fair and not just, and it contains dangerous articles which undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and its constitution.”
The report was written by 10 former officials working under former secretary of state James Baker. Talabani's most scathing attack on the report was on Baker himself, who in Iraq is seen as responsible for the fateful US decision not to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 1991 after expelling his forces from Kuwait.—AFP
