02 March 2005
The leading candidate to head Iraq's next government met Tuesday with Kurdish leaders to bolster his position, as a French journalist missing in Iraq for almost two months made a desperate appeal for her life. "I am French. I am a journalist with Liberation. Please help me. My health is very bad. I'm very bad psychologically also," pleaded Florence Aubenas, 43, in English on the undated video obtained by AFP in Iraq.
These were the first images of the correspondent for the left-leaning newspaper Liberation after disappearing with her Iraqi translator and fixer Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi from her Baghdad hotel on Jan. 5.
Meanwhile, Shiite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari met Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani and other party officials in northern Iraq in a bid to win Kurdish support to lead the next transitional government.
"We decided to continue the negotiations and create an Iraqi government of national unity in which Arab Sunnis should play a role," Barzani told reporters after they met for several hours in the Kurdistan mountain retreat of Salahuddin on the outskirts of Arbil.
The Shiite leader said the
sides had "resolved some points" but declined to elaborate.
"There was a sharing of our points of view and we have decided to continue the discussions," said Jaafari, who is due to visit the other main Kurdish leader Jalal al-Talabani in Suleimaniyya Wednesday.
The sides, which have bickered in the past over Kurdish demands for wide-ranging autonomy, papered over their differences as they vowed to create a national unity government.
Jaafari, leader of the Dawa religious party, was picked a week ago as the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which took 140 of the 275 seats in the new National Assembly in the January election.
The Kurdish Alliance came
second and has emerged as potential kingmaker in choosing the next government. The Kurds want the post of Iraqi president and a commitment to a federal and secular Iraq as outlined in the country's transition laws drafted under the previous U.S.-appointed administration, top KDP official Mohammed Ihsan said.
Interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd, said the Kurdish alliance was in a "broad agreement" with the UIA that now "needs to be translated into a meaningful program and agreement with some specificity and details." He said any deal on Kirkuk and other Kurdish demands would have to be in writing.
He added that the door was still open for talks with the faction headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose coalition came in third in the elections winning 40 seats.
Meanwhile, the missing French journalist issued a desperate cry for help. "This is urgent now. Help me! I ask especially Mr. Didier Julia, the French deputy. Please Mr. Julia. Help me!" said a gaunt and disheveled-looking Aubenas.
Julia headed a failed mission to free two other French reporters kidnapped in Iraq last August. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he was "very concerned" about the reporter's fate.
Meanwhile, the group of Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for Monday's devastating car bomb attack in the central city of Hilla, according to a statement posted on an Islamist Web site Tuesday.
The bombing has left 118 people dead and 147 wounded. - Agencies
