Submitted by Dr. Pary Karadaghi, Dec 12, 2006 15:39

On Friday Dec. 8 Massud Barzani -the president of Kurdistan region stated that the Baker Hamilton report is unreasonable and unrealistic, and its totally unacceptable by the people of Kurdistan !

Here is the complete translation official stance of KRG president.

After the study of the Baker-Hamilton report about Iraq, we would like to explain the following points.

1- While the group did not come to Kurdistan, this made the report lose its credibility.

2- The recommendation No 26 asks for review of the Iraqi constitution, in participation of the UN experts. Any review of the constitution should be in the frame of the mechanism, has been defined by the constitution. Except this, we reject any amendments of the constitution and every body should know that the unity of soil of Iraq depends on this constitution.

3- The recommendation NO 28 asks for controlling the oil revenue by the central GOV. for this, we continue to stick with the constitution about this issue and we reject any amendments.

4- The recommendation No 30 asks for delay of implementation of article No 140, specialized to Kirkuk and asks that solving this issue would be given to international Iraqi support Group in which the reports asks to form that group, we believe that the constitution has defined the mechanism and the time of its implementation, this the least right of the Kurds. So any delay of the article will cause big danger and it will not be accepted at all by the people of Kurdistan.

5- The report overall talks about empowering the central GOV and weakening the regional power, and this in itself is against the principles of federalism and constitution. And we affirm again that federalism is the only way for protecting the integrity of Iraq.

6- In some parts of the report, the worries and interests of the neighboring countries have been taken into consideration and ask for a bigger role for them. We believe that this is against the interests of the people of Iraq and especially the people of Kurdistan, this is interference.

7- In the recommendations No 27, 35 suggests those groups who are against the political process in Iraq, should be rewarded by participating them in the government and power. We believe this is against the interests of majority of people of Iraq and democratic process.

8- After our appreciation to US GOV and president Bush for toppling Saddam Hussein, we think that Baker Hamilton report has offered some unrealistic and unreasonable recommendations in the hope of helping US to get out of that turmoil and under this pretext, if they want to impose these unrealistic recommendation on us, we, on behalf of the people of Kurdistan region that any thing which is against the interest of people of Kurdistan and Iraq is unacceptable by us.

9- This report is on the contrary of what Mr. Baker told us via phone, saying that we have observed the special situation of Kurdistan. However, before the report published, we had defined the views of Kurds, the group did not pay attention to the letter and even they had not read it.

Finally, we say that we don't stick with that report at all because it ignores that achievements of the people of Iraq and especially the people of Kurdistan, after the elections and constitution, %80 of the people of Iraq approved the constitution, supported by the international community and especially the US. In stead of solving Iraqi problems by the others, the Iraqis should think about national reconciliation seriously. We ask all the Iraqi forces, those who believe in political and constitutional process and federal and democratic Iraq, serious steps should be taken to solve those problems so that we will get rid of the mistakenly recommended solutions by the regional and global countries.

Massud Barzani, KR president

I tend to agree with the writer on his comments and assessments of the Baker-Hamilton Report. Needless to mention that it has created quite a stir in Iraq. People are very unhappy with the contents of the report, in particular the Shiites and Kurds in Iraq are quite understandably upset.

Here are excerpts from a statement made by Mr. Massud Barzani, President of Kurdistan region, Iraq.

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