Top EU envoys visit Iraq pledging new partnership
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-10 08:54

A top-level European Union delegation has visited Baghdad, voicing hope for a new partnership with Iraq now that divisions over the US-led war were healed.

And in a bid to build bridges between rival commmunities here Thursday, President Jalal Talabani said he would allocate 25 seats to Sunnis on the committee charged with drawing up a constitution for the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

The surprise EU visit, aimed at preparing for a conference on Iraqi reconstruction in Brussels on June 22 bringing together representatives from 85 countries, was hailed as "historic" by EU leaders.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn (L), Iraqi Prime Minster Ibrahim Jaarafi (C) and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana speak to the media after a meeting in Baghdad on June 9, 2005.[AFP]

"In Europe the war divided us, but now we are unified to help Iraq," Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said after talks with Talabani.

"Yes, the Iraq war did divide Europe but there is a new spirit and we have put the past behind us to work for this new future of Iraq," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country is the main US ally in Iraq.

EU external affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and foreign policy chief Javier Solana were also in Baghdad.

"This is the beginning of a new political relationship that would grow into a real partnership," said Ferrero-Waldner, adding that the EU had spent 300 million euros to help develop Iraq and pledged another 200 million by year-end.

After meeting Talabani in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone the delegation was due to hold talks with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, whose new government has been greeted with a massive upsurge in violence since early May.

The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani (C), talks with British Foreign Minister Jack Straw (L) and EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana during a press conference in Baghdad following a meeting that focused on arrangements for a U.S.-backed June 22 conference. [AFP]

The European Union was thrown into crisis ahead of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, with countries like Britain, Italy and Spain supporting the war which France and Germany staunchly opposed.

Security for the EU visit was tight even by draconian Green Zone standards, with protection provided by plainclothed and uniformed peshmerga guerrillas from Talibani's native Kurdish region in addition to Iraqi soldiers and mostly US foreign guards.

"There are wide possibilities for cooperation in the political front, on the security front, on the economic front, on the trade front and on the cultural front. We need this support," said Talabani.

Meanwhile, Talabani also announced that he will give Sunni Arabs 25 seats on the constitutional drafting committee in response to the minority's demands for additional representation.

The committee has an August 15 deadline to draw up the constitution for a post-Saddam Iraq but it the option of announcing a one-off six-month delay by August 1.

Disaffected Sunnis, who ruled under Saddam but largely boycotted the landmark January elections, form the backbone of the insurgency which stepped up attacks with the formation of the new government, killing about 700 people in May alone.

But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Baghdad authorities might begin to talk with insurgents behind the violence.

"The Iraqis are trying to bring about a reconciliation of a society where societal tensions and ethnic differences were exploited by Saddam Hussein during the terrible reign that he engaged in," she told reporters in Washington.

"And so there's an Iraqi process. And I don't think that we think it our place to interfere in that Iraqi process."

An example of progress was the election of a deputy prefect, the top local administrative post in the former rebel hotbed of Fallujah.

"Sheikh Dari Abdel Hadi Yussef al-Arsan became the first elected deputy prefect in Fallujah," said an official statement which added that he had been "chosen in a democratic atmosphere" on Monday.

Fallujah, which lies west of Baghdad, was shattered in November by street fighting between insurgents and a joint force of US Marines and Iraqi troops who finally gained control of the Sunni-dominated city.

Senior Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim demanded Wednesday that the armed wing of his party play a greater role in hunting down insurgents, who have also focused on the country's majority Shiite community in attacks.

In the autonomous northern Kurdish provinces, parliament adopted a draft law for the regional presidency, to be held by Massoud Barzani, chief of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan.

Along with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the KDP has effectively ruled the Kurdish part of northern Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

Also in the north, a pipeline leak forced a halt to pumping of crude oil to a refinery in Baiji and to a holding terminal that serves the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, the Northern Oil company reported.

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