Syria recently welcomed Mas’ud Barzani, president of the Iraqi opposition KDP. The KDP administers Iraq’s Irbil Governorate, the KDP controls eight kilometers of Iraq’s frontier with Syria along the Tigris River. KDP Political Bureau members Azad Barwari, Hoshyar Zebari, and Masrur Barzani accompanied Barzani, according to Syrian Arab Republic Radio report. The Kurdish delegation met first with Syrian Vice President ‘Abd al-Halim Khaddam, and then with Abadallah al-Ahmar, assistant secretary-general of the (Syrian) Arab Socialist Ba’th Party, According to the report, “the two sides stressed that only the Iraqi people should determine their way of progress and the future of their state away from any foreign interference from abroad.” The London-based Arabic daily “Al-Sharq al-Awsat” reported on 11 April that, “Views were identical on the necessity to lift the embargo imposed on the Iraqi people, alleviate their suffering, and reject any military action against Iraq.”
Kurdish media reports cast doubt on whether the Syrian government and the KDP agree on how best to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people, or what constitutes “the embargo imposed on the Iraqi people.
