Iraqi Kurdistan: President Takes Part in Global Security Conference in Munich
After being left out of the organizational meeting of the coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in London in January 2015, the Iraqi Kurdish President, Mr Barzani, was invited to the Munich Security Conference starting today, 6 February 2015. The invitation reflects and acknowledges the importance of the Iraqi Kurds fighting ISIS. Among the topics to be discussed will be the on-going struggle against ISIS and the resulting refugee crisis.
Below is an article published by RUDAW:
Kurdish President Massoud Barzani headed for Germany on Thursday, 5 February 2015, to take part in the Munich Security Conference where world leaders will discuss global issues, including the war in Syria and Iraq and the refugee crisis it has provoked.
Barzani, who is heading a delegation, is expected to deliver a speech and meet world leaders on the sidelines of the three-day meeting that opens on Friday, 6 February 2015.
Kurdistan is in the frontline of the war with insurgents fighting under the banner of the Islamic State (ISIS), but locally known as Daesh. Erbil also has taken in some 1.5 million refugees, a tremendous burden on the autonomous enclave whose own total population is an estimated 5 million.
Iran’s nuclear talks, the Ebola outbreak, cyber terrorism and Russia’s war in Ukraine are other issues on the conference agenda.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be hosting world leaders that include US Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroschenko.
Some 60 foreign and defense ministers will also be at the 51st Munich Security Conference, including Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, the main organizer of the event, said that the meeting takes place as the world faces an “unprecedented upsurge in global crises” over the past year [2014].
“We live in the age of the collapse of order,” he said, while he criticized the impotence of the United Nations to act.
“The UN Security Council should be resolving a crisis a week -- Iraq, Syria,” he said. “Instead, the council is blocked and so is any will to reform.”
