BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani,
a Kurd who has mediated among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish parties, was
in hospital on Tuesday after suffering a stroke that left him in
"critical but stable condition", government officials and lawmakers said.
Without Talabani, Iraq
would lose an influential peace-maker who often eased tensions in the
fragile power-sharing government and negotiated in the growing rift over
oil between Baghdad and the OPEC member country's autonomous Kurdistan
region.
"President Talabani
has suffered a light stroke. His condition is stable now and doctors
are closely monitoring him and if they decide he should be transferred
outside then he'll go," veteran Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman, a
close Talabani associate who was in the Baghdad hospital.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited the hospital earlier on Tuesday.
TOUGH TIMES AHEAD?
Under Iraq's constitution, the parliament should elect a new president if the post becomes vacant and Iraq's power-sharing deal calls for the presidency to go to a Kurd while two vice presidents are shared by a Sunni Muslim and a Shi'ite Muslim.
But his exit from Iraqi politics would come at a sensitive time and any succession would be complicated, a year after the last American troops left the country.
"He is the most moderate among Iraqi politicians and the most able to defuse political shocks. I do not think anyone will be able to fill his position as a president and as a politician," Iraqi analyst Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie said.
Iraq law would see one of the vice presidents take over Talabani's duties before the parliamentary vote. But Iraq's Sunni Vice President, Tareq al-Hashemi, is outside the country after he fled to escape charges he ran death squads. He has been sentenced to death in absentia.
Any parliament vote would also be complex, with Maliki locked in a struggle with Sunni, Kurdish and some Shi'ite rivals in the power-sharing government. Talabani was crucial in helping the Shi'ite leader survive a no-confidence motion directed against him earlier this year.
Talabani also recently helped ease a military stand-off between Maliki's central government and the president of autonomous Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, in their long-running dispute over oil-field rights and internal boundaries.
That situation remains sensitive after the two sides sent troops to reinforce positions along their internal frontier.
Kurdish forces said on Tuesday they fired on an Iraqi military helicopter near Sikanyan town just north of the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, to keep the aircraft from taking surveillance pictures of their military positions.
There were no casualties in the incident, authorities said.
A veteran of the
Kurdish guerrilla movement, Talabani survived wars, exile and infighting
in northern Iraq to become the country's first Kurdish president a few
years after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
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