The office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the Syrian capital announced that the party’s leader, Jalal Talabani, held talks in Damascus on Wednesday with several Syrian officials focusing on Iraq.
The Union office stated that Talabani, who had already arrived in Damascus from Iraq, separately engaged in discussions with Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam and Assistant Secretary General of the Baath Party Abdullah Al-Ahmar, with the aim of strengthening relations and addressing developments in the Iraqi and Kurdish arenas.
Talabani plans to remain in Syria for several days. He is a member of the Council of Seven Representatives, comprising former opposition members to Saddam Hussein chosen by the United States to lay the foundation for a future interim government in Iraq.
Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the PUK, along with the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Massoud Barzani, has maintained control over northern Iraq.
Both organizations have formed alliances with American forces to combat Saddam Hussein’s regime.
It is noteworthy that the intensive consultations between the US-British coalition forces and prominent Iraqi political groups, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, revolve around the formation of an Iraqi political council consisting of 25 to 30 members in mid-July, followed by the establishment of a constituent assembly to facilitate the creation of an Iraqi transitional administration.
