Rice Tells Kurds That Unity Is Key

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged restless Iraqi Kurds to seek their future in a closer alliance with other Iraqis, as she visited the country’s relatively peaceful Kurdistan region Friday for talks with regional President Massoud Barzani.

Meanwhile, political and sectarian violence continued to afflict the rest of the nation. Kurds condemned Thursday’s abduction and slaying of a Kurdish lawmaker in Baghdad, a probable sectarian attack, and a Danish soldier was killed in southern Iraq. At least 20 Iraqi civilians were reported killed in bombings and shootings around the country, Iraqi officials said.

Rice declared that Iraq’s minority Kurds, who suffered greatly under the rule of Saddam Hussein, can find their best security guarantee not from their powerful ally, the Americans, but from the Iraqi Constitution.

The efforts of Iraq’s new government to revise the constitution and better develop a federal system “is one that can, within the framework of a united Iraq, protect and defend the rights of all people,” she said in an appearance with Barzani at his offices in Irbil, in northern Iraq.

Barzani, president of the Kurdistan regional government, spoke publicly in terms likely to please Rice, saying Kurds are committed to working within the federal system and will share oil revenue from wells discovered in their region.

“Our views were very similar, and we have pledged that we will continue in our efforts in our cooperation to implement the process that we have started, until we establish a federal, democratic, pluralistic Iraq, an Iraq which will be free from terrorism and terrorists,” Barzani said.

Despite the apparent harmony, U.S. officials are concerned by issues now swirling in Kurdistan, the least violent and most pro-American part of Iraq.

Many Kurds want the region to secede, especially as they see sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Arabs to the south on the rise.

There has been growing tension with Turkey, which has attacked members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, within Iraq’s borders. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, recently warned that if Iraq’s neighbors, including Turkey, sought to undermine the sovereignty of the country, Iraqis could reciprocate.

Kurds are also at odds with fellow Iraqis over how to divide oil revenue. Some Kurds think money from newly developed fields should be spent in Kurdistan, not turned over to the federal treasury. The constitution is vague on that point.

Barzani, asked for his view on the issue, said that as the constitution provides, “we are [for] a fair distribution of the oil revenues all over Iraq.”

Rice didn’t mention the issue during her appearance, but earlier in the week she said the United States favored an equal distribution of oil wealth to all segments of the country.

The dispute has exacerbated tensions between Kurds and those Iraqis who favor a strong role for the central government in allocating energy revenue. The conflict is often played out violently on the streets of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, where U.S. and Iraqi forces Friday imposed a new curfew in an effort to stem a string of bombings and assassinations.

Danish military officials said a soldier was slain in fighting in Basra.

Violence has been a constant in Baghdad, where Mohammed Redha Mohammed, a Kurdish member of parliament, and a bodyguard were abducted Thursday and later found dead. The two were kidnapped as they left the offices of a prominent Sunni charity.

Such killings are often carried out by sectarian death squads suspected of having ties to Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security forces. U.S. and Iraqi officials consider the Shiite gangs the most destabilizing element in the civil warfare that has gripped much of central Iraq.

The 1,200-man 8th Brigade of the Interior Ministry was taken off Baghdad’s streets this week amid charges of complicity or cooperation with Shiite death squads. But at a news briefing Friday, U.S. Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the officer in charge of training Iraqi police, called that move an “isolated incident.”

The 8th Brigade has had a bad reputation for months, he said, and he commended Iraqi police, noting that 4,000 officers have been killed and 8,000 wounded since August 2004.

Iraqi forces have made significant progress under the current government, he said.

“A year ago we had a situation where a police station was attacked and policemen were running out the back door leaving all the equipment,” he said. “That does not occur anymore. Our policemen are more confident.”

But Iraqis continue to express grave doubts about the government and its security forces.

“These days the Iraqi people are being slaughtered, and the politicians are only concerned about how to divide Iraq, to make one part for a particular sect,” Hareth Ubaidi of the Sunni Nawaf Mosque in Baghdad told worshipers gathered for Friday prayers.

“All of this is preparing for a sectarian war.”

paul.richter@latimes.com

borzou.daragahi@latimes.com

Richter reported from Irbil and Daragahi from Baghdad. Times staff writers and special correspondents in Baghdad, Diwaniya, Kirkuk and near Basra contributed to this report.