Army Takes Offensive As Kurdish Rebels Return From Iraq

By Karl Vick - Washington Post Foreign Service - Tuesday, May 10, 2005; A12

PERVARI, Turkey - Residents of this town nestled in the cliffs of southeastern Turkey counted 86 military vehicles lurching deeper into the mountains one day last month, with foot soldiers peering out. Overhead, Cobra attack helicopters stuttered across an epic blue sky laced by the contrails of F-16 warplanes.

IBRAHIM JAAFARI: PRIME MINISTER
Ibrahim Jaafari, a 58-year-old physician, was spokesman for the Islamic Daawa Party, one of Iraq's oldest political parties. Born in Karbala in 1947, he was educated at Mosul university as a medical doctor. He lived in Iran and UK from the 1980s until the fall of Saddam Hussein. When he was serving in the mainly ceremonial role of vice-president in the US-appointed interim regime, an opinion poll last year suggested Mr Jaafari was Iraq's most popular politician. Mr Jaafari is widely seen as a unifying figure, keen to bring Sunni Arabs into the democratic fold after their widespread absence from election polling stations.

BAGHDAD, May 9 (AFP) - 11h56 - The Iraqi cabinet was sworn in for the second time in a week Monday after Kurdish leaders insisted a reference to federalism that had been removed from the original text be reinserted.

Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish politician newly inaugurated as president of Iraq
was interviewed by the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad. Monday, 18 April, 2005

Associated Press - Tue. May. 3 2005 6:17 AM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's incoming prime minister struggled to find a Sunni Arab to run the key Defense Ministry in time to join Iraq's first democratically elected government when it takes office Tuesday.

Smh.com.au
April 11, 2005 - A man who was an intelligence officer in the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein committed suicide after news that Jalal Talabani was sworn in as President of Iraq.

A chronology of key events:
1920 25 April - Iraq is placed under British mandate.

Iraqi transitional assembly elects Kurdish leader

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's new transitional assembly took an expected but historic step Wednesday, electing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the nation's president -- a symbol of the new Kurdish clout in the largely Arab nation.

BAGHDAD (AFP-Thu Apr 7, 9:38 AM ET) - Former rebel leader Jalal Talabani took the oath of office as Iraq's first Kurdish president as the country's new government finally took shape more than two months after watershed elections.

By EDWARD WONG - New York Times - Published: April 7, 2005

AGHDAD, Iraq, April 6 - A Kurdish militia leader who fought Saddam Hussein for decades was named president on Wednesday by Iraq's national assembly as Mr. Hussein watched the proceedings on a television inside his prison.