Text of President Jalal Talabani’s speech at the opening session of the Kurdistan National Assembly, Arbil, June, 4th, 2005.

Dear Sisteres and Brother,

From the depth of my heart, I salute you on this historic day, the day of opening the first assembly in the darkness of dictatorship [reference to the anniversary of opening the first Kurdistan National assembly on June 4^th, 1992.]

I hope that you turn your assembly into a true and effective platform in order to perform your duties and defend the rights of the people of Kurdistan and Iraq and strengthen the Kurdistani and Iraqi national unity.

Your freely-elected assembly is the resemblance of the “flower bunch” saying, as it represents many parties and various ethnicities, Kurdish, Turkoman and Chaldo- Asseryans. I wish that the Arab ethnicity was also represented amongst them.

Your assembly is carrying out its duties at a critical stage in Iraq’s history, an era of democracy, federalism, pluralism and entrenched national unity. We all face the threat of terrorism that is exported and also stems from the orphans of the criminal Saddamist dictatorship.

There is no other way but to help each other, coordinate and unite with all the forces of good, the patriotic government and the friends in order to get rid of this evil.

Today, we face a sacred duty, the duty of drafting a permanent constitution upon which we will build our new Iraqi state. A state that is based on equality of citizenship rights between all Iraqis; a state that guarantees democratic, federal and pluralistic rights and duties of all; a state that forever ends the traces of sectarian and ethnic oppression.

Here, one has to say that representatives of all sections of Iraqi society should be present. True representatives of our Sunni-Arab brothers have to be present alongside the elected representatives of the Shia, the Kurds, the Turkomans and the Chaldo-Asseriyans.

We also face the task of rebuilding our armed forces on non-partisan, non-sectarian and non-ethnic basis. The armed forces should be for the whole of the Iraqi people and should not interfere in politics.

To summarise, we are facing the challenge of building a democratic and federal state that is independent and when our forces complete their rebuilding we can then respectfully see off the forces of our allies, who we thank for saving us from dictatorship.

Once again I welcome the esteemed guests.