The Kurds will not honor any of Saddam's oil contracts after the war.

"A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator," added Salih, who is prime minister in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan government that controls Iraq's eastern Kurdish area.

This man will have a high ranking position in any new government. I wonder what kind of heat Chirac will get from French oil companies.

Salih is expected to be one of the leading political figures in Iraq, along with the PUK's leader Jalal Talabani, after the fall of Iraq's current leader Saddam Hussein. The Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, protected for a decade by British and U.S. warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone, has become an island of prosperity and nascent democratic ways.

While there is no guarantee that Salih will be elected to a high position in whatever new government emerges in Baghdad after Saddam, the Iraqi Kurds -- both in the PUK area and those in the region controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and its leader Masud Barzani -- constitute the best-organized opposition in Iraq and are expected to play a decisive role.

The Kurds couldn't resist taking a shot at another country who wobbled in support, there ols nemesis Turkey.

Prime Minister Salih went on for talks with senior Bush administration officials on plans for rebuilding post-war Iraq and for creating political stability. His top priority was to dissuade the Bush administration from giving the Turkish military any role in the Kurdish region on northern Iraq.

"Turkish military involvement will invite other neighbors to intervene, like Syria and Iran. This would open Pandora's box. It would create havoc, and compromise the real mission, which is to install representative government and democracy in a stable Iraq, at peace with its neighbors."

Should make things interesting.