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BAGHDAD, March 16 (AFP) - 15h35 - Iraq's
pugnacious Kurds, with the second largest share of
seats in the new parliament, are fighting for their
rights in the political arena, mindful of past
injustices inflicted by Saddam Hussein and
determined never to be victims again.
The Kurds, with 77 parliament seats, are seeking to
protect their hard-won autonomy in their northern
enclave and reclaim the ethnically-divided northern
oil city of Kirkuk from Saddam Hussein's legacy of
Arabisation.
Remembering the past calamities inflicted upon them,
the Kurds know nothing is for granted with Iraq's
Arab majority and they will not blindly put their
trust in their compatriots.
In a bitter reminder of the past, the new parliament
convened on the anniversary of Saddam's gassing of
the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000
people.
"Our people, especially the Shiite majority and the
Kurds, have suffered deprivation, as well as wars of
genocide at the hands of the bloody dictatorship,"
Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish contender for president,
told the parliament's first session Monday.
"Iraq will never be a stable country unless all of
its factions participate in building it."
In the pivotal negotiations with the Shiites, the
Kurds have been insisting the presidency be given to
Talabani and that they claim two other ministries as
well.
"We are talking about a new political and social
contract in Iraq. We cannot afford another eight
decades of ethnic discrimination and ethnic
cleansing in Iraq," said Barham Saleh, Iraq's
outgoing deputy prime minister and Talabani's
lieutenant in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
"If they want us to be Iraqis we have to be treated
as full citizens of the state and not second-class
citizens. Those days are over," Saleh said.
A tribal society, long nurturing the dream of a
Kurdish homeland stretching across the frontiers of
Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, the last 14 years have
given these tough mountain people a first taste of
the independence denied them for centuries.
Saddam's brutal suppression of the 1991 Kurdish
uprising triggered the creation of a no-fly zone by
the US, Britain and France in northern Kurdistan and
barred Saddam's army from the area.
With the end of Saddam's presence in the north, the
Kurds experienced a cultural renaissance. But the US
decision to invade Iraq in the spring 2003, once
more threw the Kurds into the arms of their
countrymen.
Now at a pivotal moment in their history, the
Kurdish leaders are insisting they have written
guarantees on their autonomy, their peshmerga
militias and that they will be able to reclaim
Kirkuk, the cherished city of their dreams.
Shiite leaders like Ibrahim Jaafari, most probably
the country's next prime minister, understands their
anxieties.
"They are concerned about their rights considering
the historic precedence with the Kurds, so it's
natural that they are looking for assurances, in my
opinion this a good and healthy democratic process,"
Jaafari said.
"They want to express their new found rights and
also they may have lost confidence based on their
previous bitter experiences with a succession of
Iraqi governments."
AFP
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