CAIRO, Nov 20: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Sunday he was willing to talk to violent opponents of his government if they wanted to contact him. “If those who call themselves the Iraqi resistance desired to contact me, I would welcome them. I would not refuse to meet any Iraqi who wants to meet me. But of course that does not mean I will accept what he says,” he told a news conference.
Mr Talabani was in Egypt for a reconciliation meeting of Iraqi politicians, organised by the Cairo-based Arab League to prepare for a bigger conference in Baghdad after elections in December.
Iraqi government leaders have previously said they will talk to those who are not responsible for killing Iraqis and are committed to laying down their arms.
They have also said a precondition for talks is that their negotiating partners show they have influence among insurgents by persuading them to stop attacks.
Mr Talabani said so far there had not in fact been any contacts with “those whom some describe as the resistance”.
In the opening session of the Cairo conference on Saturday, Mr Talabani said religious extremists who advocate violence and Baathist associates of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had no role in the political process in his country.
“Our national unity ... does not include under any circumstance the murderers and criminals among the followers of the old regime, who left us mass graves, or among the takfiris (Muslims who call other Muslims infidels),” he said.
POLITICAL DIFFERENCES: At the three-day meeting Iraqi politicians set aside their political differences for a while on Sunday and worked on practical details of the big conference in Baghdad.
But in statements on the sidelines of the Cairo gathering, they kept alive the dispute that erupted during a stormy opening-day on Saturday over the nature of the US and British military presence and how to end it.
Mr Talabani told a news conference his country was not under foreign occupation and it would be a disaster if US forces left the country too soon.
“Those in Iraq now are foreign forces under a UN Security Council resolution and with the consent of the legitimate government,” he said.
“Their departure without a timetable or arrangement would be disastrous. We must complete building up the Iraqi armed forces so that Iraq can protect its security itself,” he added.
But Transport Minister Salam al-Malaki, who is close to Moqtada al-Sadr, said a timetable for US withdrawal remained one of his group’s basic demands.
“Moqtada Al Sadr’s group has threatened to withdraw from the conference if the other parties do not offer more flexibility and if they do not distance themselves from their extremist positions,” he told reporters as committees started to meet.
suicide attack: The death toll from a suicide car bomb attack on the funeral of a Shia sheikh rose to at least 50 from 35, doctors said on Sunday, as the number killed in a spate of attacks over the past two days rose to 150.—Reuters