Jalal Talabani Quotes

Our gratitude to the American people is immense and we should never be embarrassed to express it.

Trust is for lovers. In politics there are only converging interests.

The Kurdish people have the right of self-determination like every other nation in the world.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.

Human rights and individual liberties, including religious freedom, will be at the heart of the new Iraq.

As president of Iraq, I shall strive to represent the diversity of a country that has too often in the past denied difference.

Every human must take responsibility for his actions.

I always tell the Kurds who defend independence: Let's say we declared the independent Kurdish state and Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey imposed sanctions on us, without waging a war. How would we survive under those circumstances?

Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy, federal and autonomy.

The justice of our cause must be reflected in the manner in which we rectify the crimes of the past.

I must tell you that I am committed, as the president of Iraq, to benchmarks and to do our best to achieve some progress forward for national reconciliation.

We need to make a distinction between misled Iraqis, those who believe that they are carrying weapons to liberate Iraq from what they call occupation, and criminal gangs that came from outside and wants to wage a deadly war on the Iraqi people, killing women and children in mosques and churches.

Talabani and Al-Maliki want to keep their seats for ever. Talabani forgets that the side which brought him to power was the United States and it brought him by rigging the elections.

I believe the democratic transformation in Iraq will lead to change in Middle East.

We must acknowledge that for scores of years the Iraqis have offered martyrs and victims but have not been able to change the regime.

Military confrontation is not a suitable alternative in confronting terror and current security threats.

The Western governments will be encouraged and persuaded to deal with the real representatives and listen to the real voice of the Kurdish people.

The brutal regime of the dictator fell, the regime that ruled Iraq for decades, the decades of darkness. The decades that were of tyranny.

I voted 'yes' and I urge all Iraqis, no matter their different ethnicities and religions ... to vote 'yes' to the constitution

We must provide all kinds of freedom, personal and economic, to all Iraqis. I will fight for that.

To move any regime you need to have co-operation and co-ordination between Kurds, Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, the people and the army. Until we have this we cannot change the regime.