AP Features, February 26th, 2007
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was in stable condition Monday, recuperating from exhaustion and lung inflammation at an Amman hospital, his personal physician and other officials said.
The physician, Yedkar Hikmat, said rumors about a heart problem were "categorically wrong."
"This is not true at all, the president's case doesn't involve any heart problems. He did not suffer any heart attack. His heart is 100 percent good," Hikmat said.
Talabani, 73, fell ill Sunday and was unconscious when he was rushed to a hospital in Sulaimaniyah, his hometown in northeastern Iraq. He was then flown to neighboring Jordan later in the day for extensive examination.
Talabani's spokesman, Hiwa Osman, speaking from Baghdad, denied that the Iraqi president had been moved to intensive care, and said the president remained in a normal hospital room.
"He's very good. He's stable," Osman said.
Talabani's son, Qubad Talabani, told CNN that his father "did not have a heart attack" or a stroke, and had made his own way off the plane when he landed in Jordan.
"He's absolutely up and about, being able to communicate," Qubad Talabani added.
Saad al-Hayyani, the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan, said Talabani "was found to have suffered exhaustion and a mild inflammation of the lungs."
Chief Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh told reporters that King Abdullah II, who visited the Iraqi president on Monday, had instructed doctors at the hospital to provide Talabani with all possible care.
"He is a guest and a dear friend of Jordan, and we will do everything for him," Judeh said.
The day before Talabani collapsed, he appeared in Sulaimaniyah in public and met U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq.
A member of Talabani's party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, 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. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
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Associated Press Writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, and Dale Gavlak and Shafika Mattar in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
