{"id":10794,"date":"2017-10-04T07:08:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T07:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10794"},"modified":"2017-10-04T07:08:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T07:08:22","slug":"veteran-iraqi-kurdish-leader-jalal-talabani-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10794","title":{"rendered":"Veteran Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">The Kurdish leader and former Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, has died at the age of 83, Iraqi state TV has said.<\/p>\n<p>Talabani was a veteran of the Kurdish struggle for an independent state and founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1975.<\/p>\n<p>In 2005, two years after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, he became Iraq&#8217;s first non-Arab president.<\/p>\n<p>He stepped down in 2014, two years after suffering a stroke that led him to seek medical treatment in Germany.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Jalal Talabani, political giant<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Where is Iraqi Kurdistan?<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Iraq country profile<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although the post of president is largely ceremonial, while in office he helped mediate disputes among the country&#8217;s many political and religious factions.<\/p>\n<p>Talabani&#8217;s death was announced on Tuesday amid a major rift between the autonomous Kurdistan Region and the Arab-led central government in Baghdad.<\/p>\n<p>Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has demanded that the Kurdish authorities annul the referendum on independence that was held eight days ago and banned international flights to the region.<\/p>\n<p>The Kurdistan Regional Government insists the vote, in which more than 90% of people backed secession from Iraq, was legitimate and accused Mr Abadi of &#8220;collective punishment&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kurdish leader and former Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, has died at the age of 83, Iraqi state TV has said. Talabani was a veteran of the Kurdish struggle for an independent state and founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1975. In 2005, two years after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}