All news

Talabani defends Kurdish peshmerga militia

BAGHDAD, April 23, 2006 (AFP) - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Sunday defended the Kurdish peshmerga militia, insisting they were a "regulated force".

"Peshmerga is not a militia. It is a regulated force," Talabani, a Kurd, said at a joint news conference with US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Arbil and telecast live on Al-Iraqiya state-television.

The United States has consistently called for the dismantling of Shiite-led militias in Iraq, blamed for a large number of killings in ongoing sectarian violence across the country.

A ban on militias imposed under the US-led occupation authority in 2003 has never applied to the three northern provinces of Kurdistan -- Sulaimaniyah, Dohuk and Arbil -- which Kurdish rebels ruled in defiance of Saddam Hussein's regime before the 2003 invasion.

The peshmerga continue to oversee security there and Kurdish leaders, including Talabani, have resisted all calls for them to be disarmed, insisting they be retained as an independent unit within the Iraqi armed forces.

"We regard that unauthorised military formation as infrastructure of civil war," Khalilzad told reporters in reference to all Iraqi militia.

He said he was encouraged by Iraq's new prime minister designate Jawad al-Maliki's intentions to rein in the militias.

"I have been encouraged by consultations with the prime minister designate" and he has "assured he will focus on this issue," Khalilzad said, adding that all military formations must "be in hands of authorised Iraqi government forces."

On Saturday Maliki vowed to rein in the militias saying, "arms must be in the hands of the government. There is a law to integrate militias into the security forces."