Iraqi President Talabani suffers a stroke
BY Associated Press
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
12/19/12 at 5:04 AM
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has suffered a stroke and was in intensive care at a Baghdad hospital Tuesday, injecting new uncertainty into the country's political future a year after the U.S. military left.
Although his official powers are limited, Talabani, 79, is respected by many Iraqis as a rare unifying figure seen as able to rise above the ethnic and sectarian rifts that still divide the country. Known for his joking manner and walrus-like moustache, Talabani has been actively involved in trying to mediate an ongoing crisis between Iraq's central government and the country's ethnic Kurdish minority, from which he hails.
Iraqi state TV and several officials, including the prime minister's spokesman and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, confirmed to The Associated Press that Talabani had a stroke.
Talabani's spokesman, Nasser al-Ani, told reporters that the president is in stable condition, though he did not say what he was suffering from. Medical officials who appeared with him were just as circumspect. They did not take questions.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was among those who stopped by to check on the president, according to his spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi.
Medical teams from Germany and Britain are expected to arrive and will decide whether the president's condition is serious enough for him to be sent abroad for treatment, al-Mutlaq said.
Word of Talabani's illness trickled out exactly a year after the last U.S. troops rolled out of Iraq. Their departure on Dec. 18, 2011, ended a nearly nine-year war that left more than 100,000 Iraqis and nearly 4,500 Americans dead.
Original Print Headline: Iraqi president hospitalized following stroke
Associated Images:
Jalal Talabani: The Iraqi president is respected by many Iraqis as a rare unifying figure seen as able to rise above the ethnic and sectarian rifts that still divide the country. Talabani has been actively involved in trying to mediate an ongoing crisis between Iraq's central government and the country's ethnic Kurdish minority, from which he hails
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