NEWS RELEASEHEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND 7115 South Boundary Boulevard MacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101 Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894 |
April 23, 2003
Release Number: 03-04-174
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Garner Pool Day 3 -- INCLUDES FOUR PARTS: A,B,C & D
PART A
Here is pool copy from Reuters on the early part of Garner's Arbil news conference which was not broadcast live on CNN:
Asked about anti-American demonstrations in Baghdad:
Garner said: "One month ago they would not have been able to demonstrate. Demonstrations are one of the properties of freedom. They are free to demonstrate. We don't discourage that."
"I've had many Iraqis in Baghdad and in the south tell us that they are glad we are here so I think what you see right now are some staged demonstrations but below that the majority of people are glad we are here."
"The majority of people realise we are only going to stay here long enough to start a democratic government for them, we're only going to stay here long enough to get their economy going...to get their oil flowing back to the people and the revenue back to the people. I think what you will see here is a reversal of this."
PART B
Here is pool copy from Reuters reporter Mona Megalli, who is travelling with Jay Garner's entourage in northern Iraq.
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Please note, while this copy was called in to us by Mona, the information it contains was actually reported by the newspaper pool reporter on the trip, Stephen Farrell of the Times (London), who was the text representative on the visit to the parliament.
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Garner and his deputy Tim Cross paid a 10-minute visit to the Kurdish parliament in Arbil. They were greeted by ceremonial guards of soldiers wearing daggers and sheepskin waistcoats. Garner said: "I know we need to discuss the economy and other problems that we can work out together. General Cross and I will come back in about two weeks." He said Cross and the U.S. civilian coordinator for northern Iraq, Bruce Moore, would meet members of the Kurdish parliament and "take a long time" to discuss issues with them. Kurdish officials said the parliament was set up in 1992. It has a horse-shoe shaped chamber with 105 delegates, 49 from the PUK, 51 from the KDP, and five Assyrians or Christians. After the Arbil visit, the delegation was flying by helicopter to inspect a bridge near Mosul that was damaged in the fighting.
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ends
PART C
Here is pool copy from Reuters reporter Mona Megalli, who is travelling with Jay Garner's entourage in northern Iraq.
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Garner visited a bridge at Khanzer on the main highway between Arbil and Mosul. The bridge is being repaired by U.S. engineers.
Garner was asked why he had not spent more time in southern Iraq. He said:
"I have been there. I was in Nassiriya last week. I was in Basra the week before. I was in Umm Qasr three times. Tim (Cross) and I have both been all over those places, and we're going to go back down there probably at the end of next week or the beginning of the following week."
He said that in the coming week he would focus on rebuilding Iraqi ministries and getting public services running.
"Then he (Tim Cross) and I are going down to the south to spend several days and try to talk to the leaders there and get our arms around that, but this takes time."
"I think the bulk of the Shia, the majority of the Shia, are very glad they are where they are right now. Two weeks ago they wouldn't have been able to demonstrate," he said.
"We've just liberated Iraq. People are demonstrating, and that's the first part of freedom -- the right to disagree."
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ends
PART D
Garner Pool day 3
At 0935 the party left Sulaimaniyah for Arbil in two US military Super Stallion helicopters, to be greeted by a 30 vehicle convoy of Kurdish Democratic Party officials and security men.
When Garner arrived in Arbil he was again mobbed on the streets, children throwing rose petals and waving Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes and chanting 'Garner, Garner, Garner'.
The demonstration was carefully organised, with the Kurdish flag and Stars and Stripes printed on opposite sides of the paper. Kurdish marshals were seen instructing bystanders that the US side of the flag should be turned toward the general, and correcting those who got it wrong.
Garner arrived at the Hawler Talented Secondary School around 10:30 a.m. where he was greeted by the Minister of Education Abdul Aziz Tayib.
The school is essentially a magnet school for gifted and talented. High school boys and girls, some in traditional dress but most in the school uniform of gray slacks, gray blazers and white shirts, clapped and shouted as he came in the door. The children, when asked, said they were unsure of what he was in Kurdistan to do, but described him as "our liberator".
"Definitely the situation in Iraqi schools is very bad," Tayib said. He said many improvements have been made over the last 12 years, including ending corporal punishment, but "still there is a long way to go."
He said the educational curriculum emphasizes democracy. "We teach someone to have confidence, to speak opinons."
The children work in teams and group settings, rather than in rows. Each group has a leader but those leaders are rotated weekly so students learn how power and leadership is transferred. He said in 12 years 63,000 previously illiterate Kurds have been taught to read.
Garner: "What you've done here is special. You have now trained 12 years of leaders in a free and democratic society. This hasn't happened yet in the south. There are no children in the south who have experienced a freedom education.
"Our mission is to take what you have done here and take this example and spread it throughout Iraq. Because in the schools we're training tomorrow's leaders."
A band played a patriotic song about Kurdistan while the chorus sang beneath a banner that said, "Kurdistani People welcome our liberators."
"I've been all over the world and Kurdistan is one of the most beautiful places I've been. Kurdish people are beautiful," Garner said.
"Did you know one of the greatest warriors of all time was a Kurd? His name was Saladin," Garner said.
The general toured classrooms, including a 4th year English language class in which children were listening to a British tape of a dialogue on how to answer the telephone and take a message.
Written on the blackboard (technically a white dry-erase board) were the lyrics to the Abba song, "Daddy Cool": 'She's crazy like a fool, What about Daddy Cool, I'm crazy like a fool, She's crazy about her daddy.'
Education officials attended a U.S. -sponsored educational workshop in January and the Kurdish education department has submitted a grant proposal.
Immediately afterwards he held a brief town hall meeting with businessmen, tribal leaders, religious leaders and professors, at which he was hailed by the host as the "father of the safe haven."
Again he told the assembly that coming to Arbil was "truly like returning home." and praised the community for improving its public services over the past 12 years. He claimed statistics showed that for the 90 years up to 1991 only 230 public service projects were carried out in the north, but since 1991 five times that number, nearly 1100, had been achieved.
The meeting then went into a 15-minute closed session, where he was questioned on how the corruption within the UN oil for food program and how that would be eliminated, and how he would help the widows and relatives of Kurds killed or missing during Saddam's Anfal campaign, culminating in his chemical weapons attack on Halabja in 1988.
Mr Garner said he had held long discussions these issues with Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. He described the oil for food programme as "a priority" and said they had all agreed to "work together" to solve the problems.
The meeting finished at 12.45pm, after which he gave a press conference on the beautiful lawns of the Kurdish parliament building in Arbil.
Dr Fardidoon Hati Maroof, Dean of the Engineering College in Arbil, said he had "great pleasure" in meeting Mr Garner and had high hopes.
But like others he expressed fears of a Shia takeover in Iraq
"In our opinion we should separate state and religion. They have every right to express their feelings and religious thinking but at the same time they shouldn't interfere with the state otherwise we will end up with the same kind of stuff as Iran. The Kurdish people do not think that is good for each other.
"We hope they (Garner's team) are ready to tackle this and we like to be optimistic. We consider them as friends so we would like to believe what they say.
"All is good on the outside but the problem is we don't know what is inside or behind all this. But we want to be hopeful."
Ahmed Mustafa Suleiman, dean of the college of Islamic Law, voiced similar support for the Americans, and fears of Shia hegemony.
"We want the Americans to establish freedom for all the minorities and all the ethnic groups of Iraq. There should be a multiparty democracy. God has given power to the US so it is incumbent on the US to help the oppressed."
Of the Shias he said: "These people may be Iraqi from the point of view of nationality but from the point of view of politics they are following Iran. We consider they have a certain extremist class."
He too decried the idea of state Islam. "I don't want to see an Islamic government because when religion is separate from government it can preserve the sanctity of religion, its holiness."
Mr Garner and one of his deputiues Major General Tim Cross then paid a ten minute visit to the Kurdish parliament in Arbil. Walking beneath a giant portrait of Mr Barzani's father Mustafa they were greeted by a ceremonial guard of soldiers wearing yellow and pink feathers, sheepskin waistcoats and daggers.
Kurdish officials said the parliament was set up in 1992 and its horseshoe-shaped chamber holds 105 deputies, 49 PUK, 51 KDP and five Assyrian and Christian. Some of the assembled lawmakers were women, most were men wearing suits or traditional clothing and headgear.
Repeating his praise for the Kurdish democratic system as a model for the rest of Iraq Garner said: "We would like to congratulate you on what a marvellous job you have done. We have made freedom reign here. Now we need to make it reign throughout Iraq.
"I know we need to discuss the economy and other problems that we can work out together. General Cross and I will come back in about two weeks."
He said he, Cross and the northern head of ORHA Major General Bruce Moore would sit down with the MPs and "take a long time" to discuss the issues.
On the steps of the parliament he met 12 chador-clad widows of men killed by Saddam Hussein during his persecution of the Kurds.
Aisha Sai Taha, a widow from Arbil who lost 14 members of her family during a brutal 1983 crackdown by Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, captured by US forces last week.
Surrounded by the other grieving women she praised him for his work for the Kurds, and beseeched him to help find out the fate of their loved ones.
"You made Iraq paradise. Our neighbours, the Turks and Iranians and Syrians, none of them came to help us. You have done a great favour to us, just do some other favour now and find out what happened to our men, if they are alive, tell us. Even if they are not alive."
Garner: "I will send some people here next week and we will begin. (Major General) Bruce Moore will bring the people here and we will begin working on this very, very important issue."
She later said the 14 members of her family included her husband, brothers, sons and cousins. "Barzan's men came to the villages and took them. We do not know where. Only Barzan Tikriti knows where my family is. I am not interested in Saddam Hussein, only Barzan Tikriti to find out if he killed my family or not."
After eating lunch in the parliament building Garner then left by helicopter to visit a bridge destroyed by a US Joint Direct Attack Munition 'bunker buster' bomb on the Mosul to Arbil road, which he promised to replace with a temporary construction within a "couple of days."
After a two-minute briefing by US experts who advised him that the huge collapsed section of concrete had to be removed before anything new could be put in its place, he told local officials that general Carl Strock, of the US Corps of Engineers, would bring in a Bailey bridge to have two lane traffic restored as quickly as possible.
"After he does that he will get a contractor and we will rebuild it," he said, after being told by local officials that the work was beyond the capabilities of local firms.
ends/mf
Stephen Farrell, London Times Donna Leinwand, USA Today
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