Iraqi Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani Friday cast aside decades of rivalries at their first post-war reconciliation conference here, pledging to work for a united new Iraq.
"The only means before us now is to produce a democratic programme for national reconciliation based on order, dialogue, understanding and respect for others," Barzani said at the opening of the conference.
The three-day event called by Barzani kicked off in Arbil, the stronghold of his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in northern Iraq.
The conference, entitled "National reconciliation is the only way towards social peace and reconstruction of Iraq," was a rare joint meeting with his one-time foe Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
"On the first anniversary of the war and the fall of the regime, we can say that the new Iraq is totally different from the old Iraq: socially, politically, and constitutionally," Barzani said.
"Iraq will never go back to what it used to be. Everyone should be aware of that, (particularly) partisans of the new era as well as the supporters of the old regime," he said.
Barzani insisted that the path to national reconciliation is through "respect for human rights" and called for the establishment of "fair courts" to try members of the former Saddam Hussein regime accused of crimes.
But he set out conditions, saying that the cronies and officials who served under Saddam "must admit that they erred" while the leaders of a new Iraq must work to end the US-led occupation.
"If we can solve our problems in a democratic way we would be helping ourselves and the (US-led) coalition to end the occupation as soon as possible and establish balanced ties that guarantee our national interests," he said.
Talabani, who along with Barzani is a member of Iraq's US-picked interim Governing Council, insisted in his speech that Iraqis must speak with one voice to guarantee the future and turn the page on the past.
"The past formula for Iraqi unity has failed and in order to build the new Iraq we must understand that the former regime has collapsed with its ministries, its organisations and all its legal and political bases," he said.
"The new Iraq we want to build must be for all Iraqis... free of national and ethnic discrimination, free of dictatorship and provocation's." "It must be a democratic, federal, pluralistic and united Iraq... whose main components are the Arab Shiites, the Arab Sunnis and the Kurds," Talabani told the conference.
Barzani's KDP rules the northern Iraqi provinces of Arbil and Dahuk, while Talabani's PUK controls the nearby province of Sulaimaniyah, areas which escaped the control of the former regime with Western protection.
At the end of the 1991 Gulf War which ended Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, the Kurds staged a failed uprising against the central government in Baghdad but nevertheless unilaterally declared autonomy in the north.
In 1992, Saddam imposed a blockade on the north, stopping the payment of salaries and the import of goods.