'Obese' Iraqi President checks into US health clinic

Jalal Talabani, a former guerrilla fighter and now the Iraqi President, has checked into an American health clinic - in an effort to tackle his obesity problem.

Officials at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota confirmed this week that Mr Talabani checked into the establishment for a series of tests. They declined to provide further details and added in a statement: "No further information updates are planned until completion of the President's comprehensive examination."

Mr Talabani, 73, has recently complained of tiredness and suffering from the ill effects of being overweight. In February he was flown to the King Hussein Medical Centre in Amman, Jordan, on a medically equipped US military plane for treatment for extreme fatigue and dehydration after he collapsed.

He had been unconscious when he was rushed to a local hospital but recovered enough to be flown to Jordan. He returned home 17 days later.

When he left the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya in northeast Iraq on Sunday, his office quoted him as saying at a news conference several days earlier: "I don't have any health problems except my obesity and I will treat it, God willing."

He added: "I will go to the USA and stay nearly three weeks to lose weight and have some rest and relaxation ... away from meetings and work." The Mayo Clinic, which is in Rochester, is one of the US's most famous medical facilities. Over the years it has treated the likes of John F Kennedy, Billy Graham, Ernest Hemingway, Art Garfunkel and Ronald Reagan.

The Iraqi President and founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has long been known as a man with a voracious appetite. One former adviser to the Kurdish authorities in Iraq said that when he used to visit the US during the 1990s, Mr Talabani liked nothing more than to buy and devour hot-dogs. "He is a big guy and he is not that tall," the former adviser told The Independent.

Azad Jindyani, a spokesman for the PUK, told the Associated Press: "Talabani's health is very good, but he felt tired recently... because of the work and meetings." While the role of president is largely ceremonial, Mr Talabani is one of Iraq's most senior and influential politicians. When he returned home from hospital in February, thousands of Kurds lined the streets of Sulaimaniya to greet him.

In a separate development, the United Nations children's fund (Unicef) said it needed $42m (£21m) to provide emergency relief over the next six months for children in Iraq and for those who have fled with their families to Syria and Jordan.

The organisation said that since 2003, about 15 per cent of Iraq's population have left their homes. Of this, about half are children. Among those fleeing are thousands of doctors, nurses, engineers and teachers, Unicef said, all of whom provide key services to children.

"Iraq's drain of care-givers is creating major gaps in children's daily lives," Roger Wright, Unicef's special representative for Iraq, said. "We need to fill these gaps, to address the most debilitating effects of the insecurity. Conditions for too many children are deteriorating."