We are deeply saddened by the loss of Jalal Talabani on Tuesday 3 October in Berlin at the age of 83.

Historical figure of the Kurdish National Movement since the 1950s, great resistant, founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1975 which is one of the two major parties of the Kurdish resistance, with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), against the successive Iraqi dictatorships, and from 1991 onwards of the political and economic reconstruction of Kurdistan, he was elected President of the Republic of Iraq in 2005. He was reelected in 2010 and was largely respected as an architect of the dialogue between the various political forces in Iraq, where his talents of diplomacy have ensured a certain cohesion in post-Saddam Iraq.

Suffering from a stroke in December 2012, he was hospitalized in Germany, reduced and partially paralyzed. He later returned to Kurdistan where he was surrounded with affection and respect but could no more play an active role in the Iraqi and Kurdish active political lives.

His disappearance is a great loss for the Kurdish people, for his many friends in the Middle East and in the Socialist International, of which he was a vice-president. His funeral will take place on Friday, October 6, in his stronghold of Sulaymaniyah where his family resides.

A tribute will be paid to him on Monday, October 9, in Paris at the City Hall of Paris 15th to which will be associated the Kurdish Institute which he had many times honored with his visit.