JALAL TALABANI

We must provide all kinds of freedom, personal and economic, to all Iraqis. I will fight for that.

Our plan is to struggle against terrorism and have security for the country and help draft a democratic constitution as soon as possible.

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

The justice of our cause must be reflected in the manner in which we rectify the crimes of the past.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

A military coup needs a sacrifice and courage that you can't find in an army without morale.

My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.

Iraq is not occupied, but there are foreign forces on its soil, which is different.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

Military confrontation is not a suitable alternative in confronting terror and current security threats.

Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy, federal and autonomy.

Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

The Kurdish people welcome the no-fly zone protection, contrary to the Iraqi regime that is against it.

Every human must take responsibility for his actions.

All I wanted was to be a university teacher.

Our gratitude to the American people is immense and we should never be embarrassed to express it.

We believe that an Iraqi founding national assembly, freely elected, must decide the future of Iraq.

Conciliation is not capitulation, nor is compromise to be deemed equivalent to imbalanced concession.

As president of Iraq, I shall strive to represent the diversity of a country that has too often in the past denied difference.

Rather, it is through conciliation and compromise that we are building a fair Iraq, a just state for all its peoples.

The Kurdish people have the right of self-determination like every other nation in the world.

This will be Iraq for all without discrimination among Iraqi citizens, or ethnic or sectarian discrimination.

We will never accept any religious government in Iraq. Never. This is a red line for us. We will never live inside an Islamic Iraq.

Some Shi'ites are asking that Islam be the only source of laws, which means turning Iraq into an Islamic regime, and that is unacceptable. We accept that the religion of Iraq is Islam, and we must respect Islam and the Islamic identity of Iraqi people. But we think Islam should only be one source of the Iraqi laws.

It was an agreement between Saddam (Hussein) and the shah of Iran and not between Iraq and Iran.