Iraqi president falls ill

Iraqi president Jalal Talabani fell ill yesterday and was taken unconscious to a hospital before being flown to neighbouring Jordan for a medical check-up, medical and government officials said.

Mr Talabani’s son, Qubad Talabani, said his father was suffering from fatigue and exhaustion.

“He did not have a heart attack or a stroke,” he told CNN. He said his father had “made his own way off the plane” when he landed in Jordan.

“He’s absolutely up and about, being able to communicate,” the president’s son said.

Iraq’s ambassador to Jordan, Saad Al-Hayyani, told The Associated Press Mr Talabani had not suffered a heart attack or stroke.

A brief statement issued by Mr Talabani’s office said the 73-year-old president had fallen ill because of “continuing hard work over the past few days,” but added there was “no cause for worry”.

Mr Talabani arrived at Amman’s King Hussein Medical City in a motorcade flanked by police cars. A doctor said earlier he would be admitted to the heart centre at the facility because it had sophisticated and modern equipment, not necessarily because the president suffered from a heart ailment.

Several Arab leaders have been treated at the hospital in the past, including the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

“It appears that his medical condition is not worrisome” because he is not being flown in by a helicopter or transported in an ambulance, the doctor said.

A doctor in Sulaimaniyah, Mr Talabani’s hometown, said the president was unconscious when an ambulance took him to a hospital there yesterday.

“After his condition stabilised, the doctors advised him to go to Jordan for a complete check up,” the doctor said.

Mr Talabani, a Kurd, appeared in public on Saturday in Sulaimaniyah where he met with US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Massoud Barzani, leader of the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

An official at Mr Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party said the president has a long history of fainting when he is exhausted – a condition dating back to his years as a Kurdish guerrilla leader fighting Saddam Hussein’s regime decades ago.

Under Iraq’s interim constitution, the president serves as the country’s titular head of state. The prime minister runs the government.