|
BAGHDAD, Jan 14 (AFP) - Kurdish parties have
reached a tentative deal to call off a threatened
boycott of elections in the oil-rich region around
Kirkuk after Iraq's electoral board granted
displaced Kurds the right to vote.
"The Kurds have decided to participate in the vote
after we settled the problem of displaced Kurds.
They will be allowed to vote in Kirkuk," said Farid
Ayar, the spokesman for Iraq's Independent Electoral
Commission.
"We had delayed the printing of the ballots in the
province for this reason," Ayar said.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan threatened to lead Kirkuk's
sizable Kurdish population in a boycott of the
January 30 election over the failure to resolve the
status of Kurds who lost their homes in Kirkuk's
Tamim province under Saddam Hussein.
The agreement is now awaiting formal approval from
the Kurdish regional parliament.
"It's significant, but the deal is not final.
Tomorrow there will be discussions in the Kurdistan
regional parliament," said the KDP's official
Dilshad Miran, the Kurdistan regional government's
representative in Baghdad.
Nineteen parties had been on Tamim's provincial
list, only five of them Kurdish. Outsiders feared
the absence of the major Kurdish parties would
aggravate tensions among the city's almost even mix
of Kurds and Arabs.
Miran said the KDP now planned to put candidates
forward, but it would take another week to know how
many voters were added to the rolls in Tamim, which
already has more than 460,000 voters on its rolls.
The US army puts the number of displaced persons in
Tamim province at more than 46,000.
The Kurdish parties have ambitions to annex Kirkuk,
with some of Iraq's richest oil reserves, to Iraqi
Kurdistan. They have identified the city with their
struggle to find justice after the fall of Saddam.
Starting in the 1960s, Saddam's regime brutally
oppressed the Kurds and expelled tens of thousands
of Kurds from their homes around Kirkuk, replacing
them mainly with Arab Shiites from the south.
The move to grant displaced Kurds the vote could tip
the balance of power in Kirkuk in the direction of
the Kurds and enflame relations with Arabs in Tamim
province.
The final status of Kirkuk is not due to be settled
until a census is conducted and a permanent Iraqi
constitution is ratified at the end of 2005.
Top |
® 