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KIRKUK, Iraq, (AFP) - For Iraqi Kurds,
restitution of the northern oil centre of Kirkuk
after decades of ethnic engineering under Saddam
Hussein is a non-negotiable demand, but for the
Shiite majority it is a surefire way of further
antagonising the ousted Sunni Arab elite.
As talks on forming a new government entered a
second month, the two big winners of landmark
January 30 elections remained far apart on the
city's future Friday, amid Shiite determination to
hold out an olive branch to Sunni Arabs to ween them
away from their long-running insurgency.
The Kurds, whose 77 seats in the new national
assembly give them a kingmaking role, insist that,
as their price for joining a governing coalition,
the victorious Shiite alliance pledge to allow tens
of thousands of Kurds displaced under Saddam to
return to Kirkuk.
Kurdish leaders have repeatedly made clear that they
will not back down on their demands for a reversal
of Saddam's Arabisation of the Kirkuk oilfields,
which accounted for the bulk of exports before the
2003 US-led invasion.
"We always said we would make no concessions on ...
the Kurdish identity of Kirkuk," leading Kurdish
politician Massoud Barzani said in an interview with
a Turkish newspaper last month.
Interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said the
Kurds were prepared to wait for Kirkuk's inclusion
in their autonomous region in northern Iraq until
after a referendum on a new constitution in October
but demanded guarantees the new government would
take clear steps to rectify Saddam's Arabisation
policy.
"We will certainly be looking to some very specific
outlines and measures that need to be taken to
normalise the situation in Kirkuk," he said.
The Shiite list won 140 of the assembly's 275 seats
but needs a two-thirds majority to elect a president
and two vice presidents, who will in turn choose a
prime minister.
However, the United Iraqi Alliance is refusing to
give the Kurds any firm commitments before the
consitutional referendum for fear of driving the
tens of thousands of Arabs who were settled in the
city by Saddam in the late 1970s and 1980s into the
hands of the insurgents.
Complicating matters, many of the Arabs Saddam lured
to Kirkuk were poor Shiites from southern Iraq.
"Forming a coalition with the Kurds will not be at
the expense of any other group in Iraqi society,"
leading Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said
Thursday.
"Matters like this (Kirkuk) must be examined in the
national assembly. That's the right forum for
dealing with this issue and the people must be
consulted about it."
The agreement of the Iraqi electoral commission to
register some 100,000 displaced Kurds for January's
polls helped the community to a landslide victory in
Tamim province, centred on Kirkuk.
The main Kurdish alliance won 58.4 percent of the
405,951 ballots cast, with the main party of the
city's Turkmen minority in second place on 16
percent. Most Arab factions -- both Sunni and Shiite
-- boycotted the poll in the province in protest at
the registration of displaced Kurds.
But little progress has been made on the divisive
issue of rival property claims in the city, despite
the presence of large number of Kurdish returnees in
makeshift camps.
A property claims commission set up under the US-led
occupation to arbitrate disputes between the
returnees and the Arab settlers has moved at a
snail's pace, making its first adjudications only
last autumn.
Neighbouring Turkey, a diehard opponent of any move
to extend Kurdish autonomy, has meanwhile kept up
its pressure on its US ally for the city's status to
be left unchanged.
AFP
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