Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) welcomes beginnings of economic relationships with Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan

As a great step forward for the traumatised people of Iraq the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) described today the visit of the German Minister of Commerce, Michael Glos, to Baghdad . Just as constructive is the assurance of the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to the General Secretary of the GfbV, Tilman Zülch, last week that the General Consulate long called for will shortly be opened in Arbil (800,000 inhabitants), the capital of the Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan. The planned Goethe Institute will also help towards the building up of a Kurdish civil society, which is already marked by exemplary minority policies towards Turkmens, Assyro-Chaldaeans and Yezidi.

„Although in the Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan there has been peace for more than three years and not a single foreigner has been threatened, abducted or murdered, the German government and the Foreign Office have up to the present day warned German citizens against travelling to this area“, criticised Zülch, who visits the region himself regularly. „Many of those responsible in politics, commerce and society completed their studies in German-speaking countries, like the mayor of the capital Arbil and the Vice-President of Parliament. There German specialists are urgently needed e.g. for training of experts for ecology, for agricultural modernisation and marketing and for the building up of a social insurance system.“

The Foreign Office has however prevented, among others, university experts for town and country planning from continuing their work. Up till now the government of the Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan has protested in vain against the warnings of the Foreign Office concerning visits to Kurdistan . There are direct flights from Vienna to Arbil three times a week. The GfbV has an office and Kurdistan-Iraq Section in the country.