Jalal Talabani passes away

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq: Ex-Iraqi president and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani died on Tuesday in Germany, officials in his party told AFP.

Talabani, 83, was Iraq’s president from 2005 to 2014 and a key figure in Iraqi Kurdistan, where voters last week overwhelmingly backed independence in a disputed referendum. "Our leader died in Germany," an official with Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said.

A family member said Talabani’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he been transported to Germany, along with his wife and two children, before the referendum. Iraqi Kurdish lawmaker Zana Said paid tribute to Talabani as "the only president whose death saddens Arabs, Kurds and all other ethnicities".

"We pray to God that his death will help to bring back good relations between the brothers of Iraq." Talabani’s death, following a decades-old struggle for Kurdish statehood, came after Iraq’s Kurds voted 92.7 percent in favour of independence in the September 25 referendum.

The vote, rejected by Baghdad as illegal, has put deep strain on ties between the Kurds and central Iraqi authorities, who have cut off international flights to the region and threatened further action. Talabani was an avuncular politician and a skilled negotiator, who spent years building bridges between the country’s divided factions, despite his efforts for Kurdish independence.