WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- The Iraqi dissidents who met U.S. officials in Washington earlier this week have agreed not to divide Iraq, a major concern that was preventing other nations from helping them, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday.
Iraq's Kurdish minority has long been struggling for a separate homeland but the move is opposed by three major neighboring nations, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Each country has its own Kurdish populations and fears that a free Kurdish state on its border would encourage separatist tendencies.
Rumsfeld, who met the Iraqi leaders earlier this week, said they had reached a broad agreement on keeping "Iraq a single country" free of "weapons of mass destruction" and the one that does "not impose its will on its neighbor."
This was a clear reference to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that led to a U.S.-led military offensive against Baghdad.
Rumsfeld said that during their meeting with U.S. officials, Iraqi leaders also agreed that in future Iraq should have "rule of law, where people have an opportunity to participate in their government and in the way government does and behave things."
"Certainly one would not want to replace one vicious dictator that represses his people with another," he added.
Rumsfeld said he and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met the Iraqi opposition leaders over the weekend. The group also had meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials of the State Department and the Pentagon.
Replying to a question about arming Iraqi opposition groups, the defense secretary said some Kurdish group were already heavily armed.
Commenting on an offer by a Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, to arrange for U.S. troops to use airfields in northern Iraq, Rumsfeld said: "It would suggest that we planned to go use them, and it's a decision the president's not made."
The State Department and the Pentagon had jointly invited the Iraqi opposition leaders to Washington to encourage them to form a united front against Saddam Hussein and plan a future strategy.
