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KIRKUK, Iraq, March 18 (AFP) - 17h03 - Turkmen
and Arab Shiites demonstrated Friday in the northern
Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk against the Kurdish push to
annex the city.
"No, no to federalism; no, no to the division of
Iraq," a few hundred Shiites from radical cleric
Moqtada Sadr's movement shouted as they trickled out
from the Khazal al-Tamimi mosque in the city's
centre.
Local Sadr representative Sheikh Ahmed al-Lamy was
explicit about their opposition to the Kurdish push
to implement Iraq's interim constitution, which
calls for the return of tens of thousands of Kurds
who were expelled from Kirkuk.
The demonstrators are "here to denounce the
transitional law and its article 58," Lamy said.
Article 58 lays out clear steps for resolving former
president Saddam Hussein's four-decade policy of
arabisation, in which he moved Shiites from the
south to Kirkuk and kicked out the city's native
Kurds.
"Arabs are Iraqis and we must continue to live with
our Kurdish, Turkmen and Christian brothers in the
city of Kirkuk, and nobody has the right to chase us
out," Lamy said.
Iraq's outgoing foreign minister, Kurd Hoshyar al-Zebari,
said Friday the country's leading Shiite and Kurdish
political blocs had agreed that the next government
would implement Iraq's transitional law on Kirkuk.
Zebari said the new government was committed to
resettling displaced Kurds in the city and
arbitrating property disputes between the Kurds and
the Arabs who were brought into Kirkuk to replace
them.
Kurdish leaders say they want to make Kirkuk part of
a federal zone. Kirkuk's final status will be
settled after the drafting of a permanent
constitution and the conducting of a census.
AFP
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