WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center says it was a mistake to include the symbol of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- the political party headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani -- on a list of "terrorist logos" that police should be on the lookout for during traffic stops and other contacts with members of the public.
The PUK, one of the two Kurdish political parties that makes up the regional government in Iraq's Kurdish area, is not on the lists of designated foreign terror groups maintained by the U.S. departments of State or Treasury, and indeed is considered by many in the U.S. government as one of the closest U.S. allies in its war on terrorism.
"After a review, we determined that the PUK logo should not have been included, and we have updated the online version," National Counter-Terrorism Center spokesman Carl Kropf told United Press International Saturday.
Qubad Talabani, Talabani's son and the U.S. spokesman for the Kurdish regional government, called the inclusion of the PUK's logo "egregious" and accused the center, generally called NCTC, of "a gross error."
"I find it quite disturbing," he told UPI.
Kani Xulam of the American Kurdish Information Network said the "'embarrassing error" was "frightening" in the incompetence it betrayed. "This is clearly the act of someone who doesn't know the first thing" about the history or politics of the region, he told UPI.
The PUK's symbol, a hand clutching a rose, was in a three-page section of the NCTC's 2008 desk calendar headed "terrorist logos." More than 40,000 of the calendars were printed, according to an NCTC news release, which called the calendar "a prized resource for law enforcement and national security personnel, providing easy access to terrorist profiles and information on terrorist groups."
Kropf said the center's source for including the PUK was the database maintained by the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism -- a congressionally chartered institution based in Oklahoma City and run by contractors DeticaDFI, headed until last year by retired Lt. Gen. James Clapper, now the undersecretary of defense for intelligence at the Pentagon.
The database has entries for many groups that have supported or used violent tactics in the past, including the African National Congress, which used to be headed by Nelson Mandela and is now the democratically elected governing party of South Africa, and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The memorial institute's database was "among multiple sources of information" used to compile the various sections of the calendar, Kropf told UPI.
He said the PUK logo was one of a number of new ones the center staff had included in the calendar for the first time this year on the basis of the institute's database.
Kropf said that the list of logos is not intended to be "judgmental or definitive."
"This is not a statement of U.S. government policy," he said, "it should be considered a tool" principally for law enforcement.
Indeed, the introduction to the "terrorist logos" section reads, "Law enforcement officer should be on there watch for these emblems … during traffic stops and other contacts ... some of these groups appear on the U.S. Secretary of State's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or are groups that are believed to incorporate violence in the pursuit of their political objectives."
Talabani called for an apology from the NCTC "to the PUK, and to the families of the countless PUK members who have lost their lives fighting against dictatorship and terrorism."
He said the party -- and the regional government of which it was now a part -- had been "instrumental in tracking down and detaining countless known international terrorists."
The memorial institute entry for the PUK says that "Throughout its history, the PUK has engaged in several different forms of terrorist activities," including the kidnappings of foreign nationals in northern Iraq in the 1980s, as part of "a campaign to curb foreign support for Saddam Hussein's government and his oppressive policies towards the Kurds."
"In these situations," the database notes, "hostages were later released unharmed."
The database also says that Syria was "one of the principal supporters" of the group "throughout the 1980s and 1990s."
"The history is very interesting," said Xulam, pointing out that during the 1980s, when U.S. policymakers had viewed the secular Iraqi Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein that the PUK opposed as an important counter-weight to the Islamic radicalism of Iran, U.S. officials had "kept their distance" from the group. "But it was never considered a terrorist organization, even then," he said.
"The group now maintains that it will peacefully work for an independent Kurdistan," reads the memorial institute database. "However, as an independent Kurdistan has yet to be established, there still exists the possibility that members of the PUK will commit violent acts in the future."
