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KIRKUK, Arab candidates have pulled out of
Kirkuk's provincial election in protest at the
Government's decision to grant displaced Kurds the
right to vote, the head of the Arab electoral list
said.
The decision sent shock waves through Kirkuk's
rickety ethnic mosaic as Turkmen threw their lot in
with the Arabs and demanded United Nations
intervention to reverse the trend leading towards
Kurds controlling lucrative oil reserves.
"The decision to withdraw came after the Iraq
Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) allowed the
displaced Kurds to register to vote. That was
coupled with the security tensions in Diyala, Tikrit,
Mosul and some parts of the Kirkuk," the head of the
Arab list, Wasify al-Assy, said.
Mr Assy said his Arab Unifying Front coalition had
already decided to skip the national elections.
The boycott by oil-rich Kirkuk's Arab population was
the long-awaited fallout from a decision earlier
this month by the Iraqi Government and IEC to permit
Kurds expelled from the city under Saddam Hussein to
take part in the national and provincial vote.
The move effectively tipped the balance of power in
the coveted city in favour of the Kurds, and further
alienated Sunni Muslim Arabs living around Kirkuk's
province.
Iraq's Turkmen minority, who together with Assyrian
Christians make up 10 per cent of the population in
Kirkuk's province of Tamim, denounced the expanded
Kurdish vote.
"As Turkmen we will call on the UN and the IEC to
intervene to get everything back to where it was
before the decision that allowed the displaced Kurds
to be registered," said Faruq Abdullah Abdu Raham,
who heads the national Iraqi Turkmen Front.
"Otherwise, elections will not be fair and the
results will benefit the Kurdish side at the expense
of the Turkmen and Arabs."
Kirkuk lies outside the boundaries of Iraq's Kurdish
autonomous region but the deal has been seen as a
defacto victory for the Kurds, who dream of an
independent state with the vital oil hub as its
capital.
In the last week, 49,000 Kurds have registered to
vote in Kirkuk, the IEC said, but the displaced
Kurds have one final day to put their names on the
electoral rolls.
Reacting to the news of the Arab boycott and the
Turkmen's vitriol, the main Kurdish parties refused
to bend.
"Elections in Kirkuk will be held and the
registering process will continue until tomorrow.
This is the right guaranteed by the deal reached
with the IEC and we will never give up," said Jalal
Jawher Aziz, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's
representative in Kirkuk.
The city's province of Tamim, with an estimated 1.2
million people, has an almost even split among Kurds
and Arab Muslims.
The communities have observed a tenuous truce in the
21 months since Saddam fell from power as they vied
for power and tussled over the legacy of the Baath
party's policy of uprooting Kurds and resettling
Arabs in the region.
Iraq's US-sponsored interim constitution has
deferred the issue of Kirkuk's final status until
after the country's permanent constitution is
ratified at the end of 2005 and a census is
conducted.
While the new election agreement does not affect the
timeframe on Kirkuk's final status, it paves the way
for the Kurds to control Tamim's 40-seat provincial
council and affect the oversight of a crucial
census-taking that will help determine the city's
fate.
AFP
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