Date: 27 March 2004

Source: KDP website

ARBIL, Iraq, March 26 (AFP)

Two leading Iraqi Kurdish leaders on Saturday set up a National Reconciliation Council (NRC) and urged the Shiite majority, former Baathist officials and some of their former military foes to join.

Ending a two-day meeting here a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani also condemned terrorist attacks against civilians, urged a peaceful resolution of disputes and called on neighboring countries to help Iraq defend its borders.

The conference named Barzani president of the NRC and decided to set up reconciliation committees in each of the country's 18 provinces.

The final communique called on Iraqi civil society to take part in the NRC committees, demanded that those guilty of crimes against the Iraqi people be brought to justice and said there should be no forcible seizure of property.

"Violence has never beeen able to solve problems and Iraq is a good example," said Barzani, head of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

"We need reconciliation within Iraqi society, in the villages, in the provinces, in the cities and in the villages," said Fazel Marani, the KDP secretary-general.

Muaffak al-Rubaye, an independent Shiite member of Iraq's interim Governing Council, however made it clear that such reconciliation was conditional on making sure "the past is not forgotten."

"We must face the past squarely and draw the appropriate lessons. Those who perpetrated crimes, made mistakes must publicly ask for forgiveness. We must uncover the whole truth. Those who were deprived of their rights must get them back," he added.

Also attending the conference was 80-year-old Ibrahim Faycal al Ansari, who was army chief of staff in the 1960s and fought relentlessly against Kurdish independence.

"I was invited by Massoud Barzani and this means a lot to me as an Iraqi citizen," he told AFP.

"He knows fully well that I conducted the war with honor. They know I fought against them but that deep in my heart I was against it. I always told my superiors that this war was unjust," he said.

Ethnic Kurds who favor a federal system that would guarantee them broad autonomy have major differences with ethnic Arabs, particularly the Shiite majority that looks suspiciously at anything that might threaten Iraq's unity.

Friday, Barzani and Talabani cast aside decades of rivalries and pledged to work for a united new Iraq.

"On the first anniversary of the war and the fall of the regime, we can say that the new Iraq is totally different from the old Iraq: socially, politically, and constitutionally," Barzani said at the opening of the conference.

"Iraq will never go back to what it used to be. Everyone should be aware of that, (particularly) partisans of the new era as well as the supporters of the old regime," he said.

Talabani, who along with Barzani is a member of the Governing Council, insisted Friday that Iraqis must speak with one voice to guarantee the future and turn the page on the past.

"The new Iraq we want to build must be for all Iraqis ... free of national and ethnic discrimination, free of dictatorship and provocations."

Barzani's KDP rules the northern Iraqi provinces of Arbil and Dahuk, while Talabani's PUK controls the nearby province of Sulaimaniyah, areas that escaped the control of the former regime with Western protection.

Since the end of the 2003 US-led war that toppled Saddam, Kurdish leaders have joined forces and succeeded in enshrining Kurdish as an official language alonside Arabic in the new Iraq, which will also include a federal state in the north.

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