Massoud Barzani, Kurdish regional government’s president in northern Iraq, addresses the opening of a conference on “recognizing the Kurdish genocide” in Arbil, about 350 kms north of Baghdad, on March 14, 2013. The conference, attended by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari and foreign officials, was held to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1988 chemical gas attack by Saddam Hussein’s airforce on the Kurdish town of Halabja in which some 5,000 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed as part of the late dictator’s campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion. AFP PHOTO/ ALI AL-SAADI