Ailing Iraqi President Flown to Jordan

Differing accounts are coming out of Jordan today as news broke that the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has fallen ill. One report has the ailing President being rushed, conscious and alert, to a medical checkup to determine the cause of his feelings of exhaustion. This is the story from Iraqi Ambassador Saad al-Hayyani. The AP is reporting that he was unconscious when flown out of Iraq to Jordan.

Ambassador al-Hayyani, said Talabani had not suffered a stroke or a heart attack, but that he suffered "general fatigue and exhaustion and he needs medical examination to determine what is causing that."

A close aide to the Iraq president also denied media reports he had suffered a heart attack. "It's a lie. He is exhausted, he's very tired, he had a very long week in Sulaimaniya meeting with party leaders," the aide said.

"This morning he woke up and he felt very tired. The doctor checked him up and didn't find anything wrong. But Sulaimaniya doesn't have all the technology and he is the president so the doctor convinced him to do further tests," he said, adding that Talabani was on his feet when he went to the airport.

"After his condition stabilized, the doctors advised him to go to Jordan for a complete check up," an attending doctor said anonymously.

On Saturday, Talabani held a meeting with U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. He followed this with a joint news conference with Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani. These meetings apparently exhausted the Iraqi president.

Talabani is the head of the secular, socialist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). It is one of two parties that dominate the Kurdish enclave that broke away from Baghdad's control after the 1991 Gulf war.

An official at the PUK, said Talabani had a history of fainting when he is exhausted - a condition that date back decades ago to his years as a Kurdish guerrilla leader fighting Saddam Hussein's regime . Apparently this is due to drops in his blood pressure.