Word: talabanis
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...Kurdish List, which won 75 seats, is the most attractive coalition partner by measure of political arithmetic, although the Kurds intend to drive a hard bargain: They want their leader, Jalal Talabani, to be president; they want guarantees of a secular state; they want a federal constitution that accepts their de facto independence in the Kurdish provinces in the north; and they want those provinces expanded to include the oil-rich - and fiercely contested - city of Kirkuk. It remains to be seen how, and how much of the Kurdish agenda the Shiites can accommodate. But the incentive...
...concern to secure strong communal Shiite representation is mirrored among the Kurds, where the two major political parties, the longtime rival Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have joined forces on the Kurdish Alliance list to ensure maximum representation of the Kurdish vote in the new assembly, of which they are expected to win the lion's share. The largest Sunni Party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which had previously served in the interim government, has withdrawn from the election on the grounds that security conditions make voting impossible in most Sunni strongholds...
Some Iraqi politicians speculate that the Shi'ites may even offer the presidency to a prominent Sunni--possibly the incumbent, Ghazi al-Yawer. (Others have suggested that it's the Kurds' turn to get the presidency, making Jalal Talabani the front runner.) Sunni political parties like the Iraqi Islamic Party have indicated that they may be open to some such accommodation if the terms are right...
...Kurds The Players: A non-Arab minority comprising 25 percent of the Iraqi population, who have enjoyed de facto autonomy under U.S. protection in northern Iraq since the Gulf War in 1991. The most politically cohesive of Iraq's ethnic communities, they are led by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, two leaders who have settled their factional differences in order to present a united front in pursuit of enhanced autonomy in the new Iraq. And between them, Talabani and Barzani command 70,000 "peshmerga" militia fighters...
...soon as Iraq has elected a representative assembly. Already angered by their limited representation in the new government, Kurdish leaders sounded the alarm when Sistani persuaded the UN to avoid endorsing the interim constitution in its recent resolution backing the transfer of authority on June 30. In response Talabani and Barzani warned the U.S. that unless the interim constitution is upheld, the Kurds will boycott the January election and effectively walk away from the new Iraq. Easier said than done, of course - preventing a Kurdish breakaway is a priority that unites such traditional rivals as Turkey, Syria and Iran, each...