TEHRAN, October 6 - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif left for Iraq on Friday to take part in the funeral service of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Zarif is accompanied by a high-raking delegation.
Former Iraqi president and leader of the country’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Jalal Talabani died at the age of 83 in Germany.
"Our leader died in Germany," an official with Talabani's (PUK) said on Tuesday.
Talabani was transported to Germany along with his wife and two children after his health took a turn for the worse before the recent Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq, AFP cited a family member as saying.
Zarif conveyed a message of condolence to the Iraqi nation over the passing of Talabani, praising him as “one of the most influential, prominent and benevolent figures in Iraq.”
“His absence is irreparable damage to the brotherly nations of Iran and Iraq,” Zarif said.
Talabani served as Iraq's first president from 2005 to 2014 following the downfall of the country’s former dictator Saddam Hussain in 2003.
The avuncular politician was revered as a skilled negotiator who spent years resolving differences between Iraqi divided factions.
He was born in 1933 in the mountain village of Kalkan and studied law at Baghdad University. He later entered army for a temporary period before joining the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of current President of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Massoud Barzani.