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ARBIL:
An informal referendum on Kurdish independence
conducted alongside last month’s historic Iraqi
election drew nearly 99 percent support on a turnout
of more than 80 percent, organizers said.
A total of 1,973,412 people, or 98.7 percent of
respondents, backed secession in the poll, which has
no legal weight, said Asso Kassem of the
pro-independence Movement for a Referendum in
Kurdistan, the group that organized the exercise.
Just 19,850 people, or 0.9 percent of respondents,
voted against and 4,799 spoiled their
questionnaires, he added.
Fellow organiser Shamal Huaizi said the two
mainstream Kurdish factions had allowed the informal
poll to go ahead in the three provinces of northern
Iraq which they still administer, despite their
opposition to independence for the forseeable
future.
"The Kurdish security services authorised us to
carry out this exercise on condition that we not do
it inside polling stations," he said.
But he stressed that the poll had been conducted
across Kurdish-inhabited districts, including the
ethnically divided oil city of Kirkuk and parts of
Diyala and Nineveh provinces to which the Kurds also
lay claim.
Huaizi dismissed the concerns of the two mainstream
factions that any precipitate independence move
would spark intervention by Iraq’s neighbours,
fearful of the impact on their own restive Kurdish
minorities.
"Kurdistan was forcefully annexed by Iraq in 1924
and, following the collapse of the Iraqi state, the
Kurdish people have the right to be consulted about
independence, as was the case following the fall of
the Soviet Union," he said.
Turkey in particular has expressed determined
opposition to Kurdish moves for independence or even
wider autonomy, and has secured US promises that
there will be no redrawing of Iraq’s boundaries.
AFP
www.keralanext.com
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