My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.

To move any regime you need to have co-operation and co-ordination between Kurds, Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, the people and the army. Until we have this we cannot change the regime.

We need to make a distinction between misled Iraqis, those who believe that they are carrying weapons to liberate Iraq from what they call occupation, and criminal gangs that came from outside and wants to wage a deadly war on the Iraqi people, killing women and children in mosques and churches.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

Iraq is not occupied, but there are foreign forces on its soil, which is different.

All I wanted was to be a university teacher.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.