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NAJAF, Iraq, June 6 (AFP) - 16h28 - One of the
main Shiite parties in Iraq's governing coalition
voiced opposition Monday to their Kurdish partners'
longstanding demands for control of the northern oil
centre of Kirkuk.
The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI) is against the incorporation of Kirkuk
in an enlarged Kurdish autonomous region, senior
party official Ammar al-Hakim told AFP in an
interview.
"We do not accept the annexing of Kirkuk to (the
autonomous region) because Kirkuk is a micro-Iraq
and it belongs to all Iraqis," said Hakim, whose
father Abdel Aziz heads the formerly Iran-based
Shiite religious faction.
He said his party was also against the eviction of
Arab settlers to make way for Kurds returning to
homes in Kirkuk which were confiscated under Saddam
Hussein's regime.
"We also oppose the forced return of Iraqis to their
homes as every Iraqi has the right to live in the
city of his choice," he said in the joint interview
with AFP and Lebanon's Al-Manar television.
Saddam's regime poured thousands of Arab settlers --
both Sunni and Shiite -- into Kirkuk in the 1970s
and 1980s as part of a deliberate attempt to change
the city's ethic make-up and undermine Kurdish
claims to the key oil centre.
Hakim's party is a leading component of the
Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance which took a
majority of seats in parliament in January elections
and is now the dominant partner in the government.
But under Iraq's interim constitution, the party was
obliged to form a coalition with the second-placed
Kurdish alliance for whom restitution of their
"historic rights" to Kirkuk is a make-or-break
demand.
The city's fate was a key stumbling block in the
months of drawn-out negotiations between the two
blocs that preceded the formation of the new
government in April.
At the time Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a
leading Kurdish politician, said the Kirkuk issue
had been "addressed satisfactorily" in the coalition
agreement "based on procedures and measures mapped
out in the transitional (administrative) law".
That interim constitution stipulated that displaced
Kurds should have the right to apply for restitution
of confiscated homes in Kirkuk and set feasibility
as the only criterion for insisting on compensation
instead.
Settled Arabs "may be resettled, may receive
compensation from the state, may receive new land
from the state near their residence in the
governorate (province) from which they came, or may
receive compensation for the cost of moving to such
areas," the document said.
AFP
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