SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) President Bafel Talabani on Wednesday met with the President of the Federal Supreme Judicial Council, Faeq Zaidan.
During the meeting in Baghdad, the two sides emphasized commitments to the constitution, the rule of law, and resolving all issues that related to the people’s livelihood, the readout of the meeting released by Talabani’s office said.
They also underlined separating the Kurdistan Region’s financial entitlements and the people’s lives from the political disputes.
In the meantime, Talabani called on Iraq’s judicial authority to play its legal role regarding the current efforts to genocide-suffered Kurdish city of Halabja as a governorate.
Speaking on Sep. 18 “terrorist attack” on the Arbat airport in Sulaimani, Talabani stressed limiting such attacks and violations.
“It’s the duty of all of us to stand against the violations and breaching Iraq’s sovereignty,” Talabni said.
Three members of the Sulaimani-based counter-terrorism unit, known as (CTG) were killed and three others wounded on Monday in a drone strike on the small military airport of Arbat in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
The drone entered Iraqi airspace through Turkey’s border, Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement early on Tuesday.
Turkey on Tuesday also claimed that the Syrian-based Kurdish group fighters, the People Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara sees as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were presented at the airport.
Ankara further claimed that the CTG were in the midst of training of the YPG/PKK fighters during the attack, without saying whether it was behind the attack or not.
Turkey regularly carries out air strikes that it says target Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq, and has dozens of outposts in Iraqi territory.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
However, Kurdistan Region Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani on Wednesday denied claims regarding the presence of any forces inside the Arbat drone strike except for the Sulaimani-based Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTG).
“The martyrs and wounded of the Arbat drone strike were only the heroic Peshmerga members of the Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG),” Qubad Talabani said during a meeting with the Head of the European Union’s Liaison Office in Erbil, Torkild Byg.
“There were no other forces inside the Arbat airport during the drone strike except for the CTG,” he added.
“This is a dangerous development in which an official force of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq has been targeted,” he continued.
