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Sick Iraqi president in Amman for treatment
By Kamal Taha
AFP
AMMAN
Petroleumworld.com 02 26 06Iraq's 74-year-old President Jalal Talabani was flown to Amman on Sunday for medical treatment after falling ill owing to the pressure of recent work, the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan told AFP.
"President Talabani is in good spirits thanks be to God," ambassador Saad al-Hayani said by telephone from the Amman hospital where the veteran Kurdish leader was rushed after flying in from Iraq.
The barrel-chested former rebel fighter was then driven in a motorcade to the King Hussein Medical Centre, a facility run by the armed forces, an AFP correspondent reported.
"He fell ill as a result of the efforts he exerted during his work in recent days, but there is no indication of anything dangerous," Hayani said, while a Kurdish ally said he was suffering kidney problems.
"President Talabani walked off the plane unassisted, walked into hospital unassisted and now he will undertake medical tests," the ambassador said.
Jordan's King Abdullah II "instructed the royal medical services to provide the best medical care and all the necessary facilities to President Talabani until he gets well," state-run Petra news agency said.
Talabani's office in Iraq said earlier that Talabani flew to Jordan from the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah for medical tests after he was overcome by the unrelenting pressure of recent work.
"There is no reason to fear for his health, and we hope he will return in good health," the statement said.
A senior member of Talabani's party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told AFP on condition of anonymity that the Iraqi president was suffering from kidney problems.
"He has an excess of urea. He was treated for several hours in hospital here in Sulaimaniyah, then he was flown from the airport to Amman," he said by telephone from the northern Iraq city.
A senior US administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP in Washington the United States had provided a C-130 airplane equipped with medical facilities to take Talabani from Iraq to Amman.
"Our thoughts are with him," the official said.Talabani's son Qubad meanwhile told CNN television that his father was suffering exhaustion, denying reports he had suffered a heart attack or a stroke.
"I spoke with him this morning. He was in good spirits. He's suffering from exhaustion," Qubad Talabani told the US news network by telephone. "The reports about him having a heart attack or a stroke are completely false."
Talabani is a Kurd and the first non-Arab to lead an independent Arab majority state. He became head of state in April 2005 after the first election in Iraq since a US-led invasion overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Talabani has since won praise for attempting the near impossible task of brokering a consensus between post-invasion Iraq's bitterly divided Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Kurdish factions.
His most recent public engagement was on Saturday, when he held a news conference in Sulaimaniyah after meeting Kurdistan's regional president, Massoud Barzani, and the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.
In recent days, Talabani has been forced to intervene in three national disputes that threaten to further divide Iraq's warring factions.
On Saturday, he criticised US forces for arresting the son of a prominent Shiite politician, Abdel Aziz Hakim, an incident that triggered massive street protests in central Iraqi cities.
Two days earlier he urged Sunni and Shiite politicians not to politicise the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by Shiite security forces, a dispute which saw his Vice President Taraq al-Hashemi clash with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Last week, Talabani announced that radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was in Iran, but he also reassured Sadr's hardline supporters that he need not fear arrest and was not a target of the latest Baghdad security crackdown.
Talabani has also been closely involved in negotiating a compromise over a law to divide Iraq's massive oil revenues, a key sticking point in the struggle for national reconciliation.
Born in 1933 in the rustic Kalkan village in the depths of northern Iraq, as a young man he was quickly seduced by the Kurdish struggle for a homeland to unite a people scattered across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.
Impeccably dressed in Western suits, he has an unaffected manner and a sense of humour, and is known to ask Iraqi journalists for the word on the street. His preferred catchphrase is: "My door is open to all Iraqis".
AFP 25 2340 GMT 02 07
Copyright© 1999 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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