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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Thousands attend Iraqi ex-president’s funeral

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SULAIMANIYA: Jalal Talabani, whose presidency of Iraq symbolised the resurgence of Kurdish people, was brought home on Friday and borne to his burial through streets crowded with tens of thousands of mourners. Iraqi and Kurdish TV showed the Iraqi Airways plane which carried Talabani’s coffin from Germany, where he died on Tuesday at the age of 83, landing in Sulaimaniya, his home city in northern Iraq.


A 21-gunshot salute was given for the coffin, draped in the red, white and green Kurdish flag stamped with a golden sun.


A military band played the Iraqi national anthem, “Mawtini” (my nation), and Chopin’s funeral march.


The Kurdish flag on the coffin triggered a wave of protests on media close to political groups which support the Iraqi government.


Al-Etejah TV interrupted its broadcast “because the coffin was not draped by the Iraqi flag”.


The plane that brought the body home was given special exemption from a ban on international flights to the Kurdish region imposed a week ago by the Iraqi government, in retaliation for a Kurdish referendum on independence.


Talabani became Iraq’s president in 2005, the first person to hold the job after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion.


Although the presidency has few real powers, the decision to give it to a member of the Kurdish minority symbolised unity for Iraq under a constitution intended to share power among ethnic and religious groups.


Talabani stepped down as president in 2014 after a long period of treatment following a stroke in 2012.


His successor, Fuad Musam, also a Kurd, presided over the ceremony at the airport on Friday.


Prime Minister Haider al Abadi, who is demanding that the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cancels the outcome of last week’s independence vote, did not come to the funeral.


Interior Minister Qasim al Araji represented the central government.


“The government delegation protested strongly because the Iraqi flag wasn’t put on Mam Jalal’s coffin, even though the national anthem was played,” said a government spokesman in a statement.


Talabani is affectionately known as Mam, the Kurdish for “uncle”.


Holding pictures of Talabani and waving the green flags of his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, tens of thousands gathered along the airport road and around Sulaimaniya Grand Mosque, where the prayer for the dead was held.


The funeral procession of a dozen SUVs struggled to make its way through the dense crowd from the mosque to his grave on a hill overlooking Sulaimaniya, near the Talabani family home.


The Dabashan hill was covered with people as he was laid to rest in early evening.


At the airport ceremony, Kurdish regional government leader Masoud Barzani, Talabani’s rival for decades in the movement for self-rule, sat between President Masum and Talabani’s widow Hero.


Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the highest-ranking foreign official in attendance, repeated Tehran’s assertion that the independence vote was a “strategic mistake”, Iranian media said.


Talabani had been too ill to express his views about the independence referendum.— Reuters


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