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FW: Iraq Coordinator Ricciardone's Perspectives on Kurds



Some US propaganda, perhaps worth responding to:
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-----Original Message-----
From: US-IRAQ Policy from the Department of State
[mailto:US-IRAQPOLICY@LISTS.STATE.GOV]On Behalf Of USINFO Iraq
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 9:11 PM
To: US-IRAQPOLICY@LISTS.STATE.GOV
Subject: Iraq Coordinator Ricciardone's Perspectives on Kurds


Remarks by State's Ricciardone on Kurds in the Global Arena
(At American University Center for Global Peace, April 17)

Francis J. Ricciardone, the Department of State's Special Coordinator for
Transition in Iraq, provided his perspectives on "Kurds in the Global Arena"
at American University's Center for Global Peace on April 17.

Ricciardone began his remarks with the following "take-home" points:

--  First: there simply is no overarching U.S. Government policy toward "The
Kurds," as such.  Rather, we interact with Kurds precisely as we do with any
other citizens of their various countries.

-- As "globalization" inevitably turns formerly local issues into
international ones, non-state players are rising in influence in the rapidly
evolving business of international relations.

-- Third, Iraqi Kurds are among the leaders of those free Iraqis who are
breaking Baghdad's dictatorial monopoly on communications -- both among
Iraqis and between them and the world.  In so doing they are laying the
groundwork for a hopeful, modern definition of what it can mean to be an
Iraqi, and what Iraq can be as a country.

Ricciardone said the United States believes the human rights of Kurds are to
be protected as fully as those of their other countrymen and that a strong
democracy affords the best protection for the rights of all citizens in any
country.

U.S. policy toward Iraq is clear, he said: "We support the territorial
integrity and unity of Iraq as necessary for regional peace and stability.
... We recognize that change in Iraq will come from within, and that who
will lead the new Iraq, and how it will be organized, are questions that the
Iraqi people will and must decide all together when they are free to do so.

"We look forward to the return of Iraq to the community of nations under a
new government that will respect the rights of all Iraqis and of Iraq's
neighbors under international law," Ricciardone said.  "Iraqi Kurds are
among the most committed advocates of such a new Iraq," he added.

Free Iraqi Kurds are leading their countrymen of all ethnic origins in
communicating as never before and are making the most of such world access
to expose the truth not only about their oppressors, but more importantly,
about themselves, Ricciardone said.  "In the process, they are creating a
dynamic definition of who they are as Kurds and as Iraqis, for the world,
for their country, and for themselves."

Following is the text of Ricciardone's remarks:

(begin text)

An American Diplomat's Perspectives
On Kurds in the Global Arena

Remarks by Francis J. Ricciardone

American University - Center for Global Peace
April 17, 2000

Thank you, Ambassador Murphy, for your generous introduction.  I commend
American University's Center for Global Peace and Professors Carole O'Leary
and Abdul Aziz Said for organizing this symposium.  Thank you for inviting
me.  Secretary Albright has made clear that we in the Department of State
should seize just such opportunities to converse with American and foreign
publics on the issues that we manage on behalf of our citizens.

I was invited as a Foreign Service Officer with experience in Iran, Turkey,
and Iraq.  My job now, however, is to coordinate the United States' support
for Iraqis working to promote a transition to democracy under a new
government, so I will focus on our dealings with Iraqi Kurds.  Obviously, my
participation today does not imply that the Department of State or I endorse
what others here might say.

Overview:  The United States and "The Kurds":

Let me now offer you my "take-home" points:

--  First: there simply is no overarching U.S. Government policy toward "The
Kurds," as such.  Rather, we interact with Kurds precisely as we do with any
other citizens of their various countries.

To illustrate, I will recap the larger Iraq policy context underlying our
relations with the Iraqi Kurds and other free Iraqis.  Our approach both
suits and reflects the profound changes underway in the conduct of
international relations.  This leads to my second point:

-- As "globalization" inevitably turns formerly local issues into
international ones, non-state players are rising in influence in the rapidly
evolving business of international relations.

-- Third, Iraqi Kurds are among the leaders of those free Iraqis who are
breaking Baghdad's dictatorial monopoly on communications -- both among
Iraqis and between them and the world.  In so doing they are laying the
groundwork for a hopeful, modern definition of what it can mean to be an
Iraqi, and what Iraq can be as a country.

Dealing with Kurds vs. "The Kurds":

You might reasonably have expected to hear a statement of United States
policy toward "the Kurds."  I am sorry to disappoint: I know of no statement
of an official United States "policy" toward "the Kurds" as such.  There is
simply no need.

This symposium will consider questions of Kurdish identity -- communal,
political, or otherwise.  Those are complex, sensitive, and fascinating
issues for Kurdish people, their neighbors, and their governments, and for
scholars anywhere to debate.  But those issues certainly are beyond the
United States' ability, authority, or responsibility to resolve for others.
Hence, as a practical matter, we simply set aside such questions as
immaterial to our ability to communicate productively and respectfully with
Kurds wherever we have common interests to address.

That is, like other governments foreign to them, we deal with Kurds as
citizens of their countries.  Of course, we believe the human rights of
Kurds are to be protected as fully as those of their other countrymen.  We
also believe that a strong democracy affords the best protection for the
rights of all citizens in any country.  I will not compare the status of
Kurds in different countries.  But I will briefly sketch our dealings with
several sets of Kurds to show that the absence of a specific "Policy on The
Kurds" does not impede useful, direct U.S. Government communications with
individual Kurds and with Kurdish organizations who play important local or
national roles in their countries.

Of the states blessed with large indigenous Kurdish populations, clearly
Turkey, as a NATO ally, has the best and closest relations with the United
States.  This means that thousands of American businesspeople, scholars,
journalists, politicians, tourists, diplomats and soldiers do various forms
of business with Kurdish-origin Turks every day.  Usually, and quite
naturally, such Americans are unaware of and indifferent to the ancestry of
their Turkish interlocutors.  The Turkish Parliament counts many Kurdish
deputies, and many Turkish municipalities routinely elect Kurdish mayors.
Our diplomats meet such prominent Turkish citizens as routinely as we see
Turkish politicians and officials of Balkan, Caucasian, Central Asian, or
other backgrounds.  We promote American exports and investment all over
Turkey, including in the Southeast, where we see particular business growth
opportunities.

By contrast, since the US still has no direct diplomatic relations with Iran
and no official American presence there, our direct official contacts with
Iranian citizens, of any description, in their own country are nil.

Iraq is, of course, a peculiar case.  Few, if any, democracies have what
could be called "normal," much less "good" relations with Baghdad, and of
course we have no relations at all with that regime.  But we do have direct
and meaningful contacts with a wide range of Iraqis, either outside Iraq, or
in northern Iraq -- so far the only part of Iraq where its citizens can
freely communicate with each other and with the outside world.

It is hard for us to imagine a future free Iraqi national parliament or
government in which Kurds, and for that matter their Turcoman and Assyrian
neighbors also, do not play leading roles alongside their Arab countrymen.
Of course, until all Iraqis live under a national government that is
accountable to them, we and many other governments will continue to deal
respectfully and openly with free Iraqi Kurdish, Turcoman, Assyrian, and
Arab personalities and groups as the holders of local authority, personal
prestige, and wide influence.  We see them in an anomalous and temporary
situation, after which they will have even more impact on the strategic
directions of their country and its national government.  We believe that
even now, such free Iraqis, far more than the Baghdad regime, best display
their country's civilization and its potential.

Iraqi Kurds within US Iraq Policy:

We deal with Iraqi Kurds, as with all free Iraqis, within the context of our
policy toward Iraq.  That policy is clear: We support the territorial
integrity and unity of Iraq as necessary for regional peace and stability.
We would oppose the creation of separate states or statelets either for the
Kurds or for any Iraqi ethnic or sectarian community.  We recognize that
change in Iraq will come from within, and that who will lead the new Iraq,
and how it will be organized, are questions that the Iraqi people will and
must decide all together when they are free to do so.  We look forward to
the return of Iraq to the community of nations under a new government that
will respect the rights of all Iraqis and of Iraq's neighbors under
international law.  We deal with Kurdish parties and individuals as
important constituents and leaders of an Iraqi national movement that seeks
to restore such an Iraq to all its people, and to its rightful place in the
world.  Iraqi Kurds are among the most committed advocates of such a new
Iraq.  I look forward again today to hearing some of them discuss how they
want a free Iraq to work, and how to bring it about.

Let me here rebut a fallacy suggested by some opponents of the Iraqi Kurds'
long struggle against tyranny.  We see no comparison at all, as some have
suggested, between terrorism, as practiced by the Kurdistan Workers' Party
or PKK, versus the Iraqi Kurds' resistance to an outlaw regime condemned and
sanctioned by the United Nations as an oppressor.  There is no moral
ambiguity here.  We condemn PKK terrorism, period.

Shaping a New Iraq

Though Iraqis often ask our outlook, the United States Government does not
and really can not prescribe how the next Baghdad government should reform
the state to guarantee the rights of all its citizens and to restore and
strengthen national unity.  Naturally, we favor democracy, protected by the
rule of law, as the best way to do this.  Beyond this, it is not for us to
flash "green" or "red lights" to the various plans or philosophies now
discussed by free Iraqis.  In general, we are most comfortable with
democratic political principles that promise to strengthen national unity,
stability, and prosperity, and to guarantee the full freedoms and other
human rights of all Iraqis.  Likewise, we are most uncomfortable with any
policies that would tend to divide or to oppress Iraqis, and thus further to
weaken Iraq, as the current regime continues to do.  We support the
universal aspiration of Iraqis to put the days of "divide-and-rule"
dictatorship into the past.

The Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella grouping representing Iraqi
democratic opposition parties of all ethnic, sectarian, and ideological
communities including the major Kurdish parties, has described such a free
Iraq as the goal of all Iraqis.  As I understand the INC, they advocate a
democratic Iraq with one national government, one army, one diplomatic
service, one passport, one currency, and freedom of movement and commerce
for all Iraqis from Zakho to Fao.

At the same time, INC thinkers, including the Kurds among them, advocate
some constitutional decentralization of fiscal and political authority.  I
find it healthy that the INC has begun this important national debate even
now, the better to develop a ready-made national consensus for the day
dictatorship ends in Iraq.  The Iraqis, like any other free people, will
have to decide for themselves the right balance between central and
decentralized authority, as also between public and private sector
responsibilities, and other difficult issues such as the role of religion in
the state.  And they will have to do this together.  Whatever the terms of
their debate, I am confident that the Iraqis will succeed in striking the
right balance for them.

Iraqi Kurds as Influential Non-state Actors:

Let me return now to the growing influence of Iraqi Kurds as non-state
players on the global stage. It is remarkable that Iraqi Kurds, formerly
among the most culturally and geographically isolated people on the planet,
have embraced overt, broad engagement with the outside world with both
spirit and skill.  Their budding success in the world arena has been hard
won, through an epic and painful learning process.

One eulogist recently has credited this engagement with the world as an
enduring legacy of Mulla Mustafa Barzani.  Born a simple villager into a
remote province of the Ottoman Empire, Mulla Mustafa died far from his
birthplace in a superpower capital. As a guerrilla leader, he had found that
the force of local arms, however heroically borne, could not prevail against
a modern army backed by the full resources of a then-wealthy state, no
matter how poorly led.  Hence, he sought and exploited secret alliances with
powerful foreign states.  Any advantages gained turned out to be only
tactical and temporary, before alignments among states shifted without
warning.  From the tragic consequences, the Kurds of Iraq wisely have drawn
the right lesson: not to retreat or disengage from the world stage, but
rather to engage all the more fully and forthrightly, the better to ensure
clarity of expectations and commitments.

How have the Iraqi Kurds -- the KDP, PUK, the Islamists, the Failis, the
tribal leaders -- come to communicate with such impact with so many states
of the world?  And this, in the face of their continuing disenfranchisement
and the internal embargo imposed by the regime in Baghdad?  As non-state
practitioners in international relations, in many respects the various
Kurdish organizations now enjoy greater influence, access, credibility, and
meaningful international relationships than does the regime which purports
to speak for them and for all Iraqis from Iraq's seat at the United Nations.
The same is slowly becoming true also for the Iraqi Kurds' as yet less
well-known neighbors, the Turcoman and Assyrian parties of the Iraqi
national opposition.  Likewise, traditionally inward-looking Iraqi Arabs,
such as tribal leaders and many Islamists, now are forging new
communications channels to foreign governments and NGOs sympathetic to their
human rights.  Governments, international organizations, businesspeople,
scholars, and NGOs care what such free Iraqis have to say, as the diverse
participation here attests.  And deservedly so.

Today's Symposium also aptly demonstrates that Iraqi Kurds have grasped the
value of international engagement and are developing the skills both to
bring home the benefits of globalization, and to manage its risks.  That
private Iraqi Kurdish wealth has endowed a scholarly chair in the study of
conflict resolution here at American University shows a sophisticated
awareness that the defeat of oppression requires far more than the force of
arms.  Such initiatives are indispensable to rebuild a vital Iraqi national
consciousness that will sustain democratic reform by the next leaders of
Iraq.

United Nations Security Council Resolutions testify to the Iraqi Kurds'
growing international influence.  The Kurds' impact also can be seen in
their open welcome in the ministries of democratic governments.  Their
connectedness to the larger world likewise is evident in the presence of the
many international NGOs, scholars, and journalists whom they welcome to free
Iraq -- without imposing official "minders."  Several Iraqi Kurdish groups
have permanently posted representatives abroad, who are trusted by foreign
hosts for their outstanding personal abilities.  Several of them are among
us today.  Such experienced and effective international representatives
should prove invaluable assets to any future national Government of Iraq.

Professor O'Leary and Professor Said suggested to me that the Iraqi Kurds'
success in dealing with powerful states lies in their dawning understanding
that the key to international influence -- whether for the state or
non-state players -- is high skill in all aspects of the use of truthful
information.  I concur.  This is not at all the same thing as either
"propaganda" or even "public relations" work.  Nor is this merely
"intelligence" work.  Rather, I refer to the timely and broad presentation
of truth to influence international public opinion, and through it, the
policies of democratic governments.  For maximum punch, no medium compares
to the visual.

The Iraqi Kurds' first big step on the road to international influence came
as the result of televised tragedy.  Images of half a million freezing and
frightened Iraqi refugees moved the conscience of the world in March of
1991.  Yet, only days before, for the lack of real-time video images, that
same world stood silent at Baghdad's mass slaughter of innocent Iraqi Arab
civilians in the south.  Only three years before, the world was able to
ignore the rumored but then-untelevised poison gassing of Halabja.  Still
earlier, the lack of televised evidence also helped shelter Saddam Hussein's
criminal use of poison gas against Iranians, until the United States
independently developed the evidence to lead world condemnation of this in
March 1984.

The sustained international attention to Northern Iraq long after the
catastrophes of 1988 and 1991, however, does not result from the one-time,
one-way transmission of images of innocents' suffering, but from two-way
engagement.  Iraqi Kurdish leaders have opened up their part of the country
far more than Baghdad has dared to reveal itself to the eyes of the world.
The Iraqi Kurds do not merely purvey information to the world, but also
welcome the world into Iraq.  Iraqi students and teachers in Dohuk, Erbil,
and Suleymania freely exchange views and information with each other and
with the world via the Internet.  While Baghdad bans UN-mandated human
rights rapporteurs and monitors, the Kurds -- and Assyrians and Turcomans --
welcome all official and independent foreign visitors.  While a son of the
dictator controls Baghdad's mass media and bans foreign publications and
broadcasts, in the north local and international broadcast channels and
publications are proliferating in several languages.

In sum, while Baghdad vainly struggles to preserve an obsolete dictatorial
monopoly on information, free Iraqi Kurds are leading their countrymen of
all ethnic origins in communicating as never before.  These free Iraqis are
making the most of such world access to expose the truth not only about
their oppressors, but more importantly, about themselves.  In the process,
they are creating a dynamic definition of who they are as Kurds and as
Iraqis, for the world, for their country, and for themselves.

To me as an American diplomat, this process is stimulating to observe and a
privilege to support.

Thank you again for the privilege of joining your conversation today.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State.  Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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