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Ethnic Minority Seeking Vote On Independence
BAGHDAD, July 22 -- Kurdish leaders have
requested that the new Iraqi constitution guarantee
the Kurdish minority the right to vote on
independence in eight years, a Kurdish member of the
constitutional committee said Friday.
The call for a referendum on secession from Iraq is
the Kurds' most overt push toward independence since
the fall of president Saddam Hussein.
Saadi Barzanchani, a Kurdish member of the national
committee drafting the constitution, said Kurds
would probably vote to remain part of Iraq if the
country became the democracy that Iraqi and U.S.
leaders have promised. "Eight years will be
sufficient time to see," he said in an interview.
Barzanchani said Kurdistan's regional parliament
made the decision to push for a guaranteed right to
vote in the new constitution, which the committee is
trying to piece together by Aug. 15.
Many Sunni Arabs, a minority group that had ruled
the country for eight decades, oppose Kurdish
independence and a drive for autonomy by some Shiite
Arabs in the southern part of the country. Shiites
make up the majority of Iraq's population.
"Iraq is a united country. I call on patriots to
stand against this brutal campaign and insist that
Iraq should be one country, one land and one rule,"
Mahmoud Sumaidaie, a Sunni cleric, said in a sermon
during Friday prayers at a mosque in Baghdad. "We
don't want the separation. Iraq will be the homeland
of the Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and other minorities."
Countries that border Iraq have long opposed
statehood for the estimated 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds,
who represent a fraction of the approximately 20
million Kurds living in a region that stretches from
Turkey through the former Soviet Union to Iran.
Iraq's neighbors fear that allowing independence for
Iraqi Kurds would fuel separatist drives in their
own countries.
U.S. officials have consistently opposed the
secession hopes of their Iraqi Kurdish allies,
saying a landlocked Kurdistan, surrounded by hostile
neighbors, would not be viable.
Barzanchani said secession was "the legitimate right
of each part of Iraq." He argued that granting all
regions the right to break away if the central
government neglected them was "one of the strongest
guarantees of unity" for Iraq.
Kurds make up 15 to 20 percent of Iraq's population.
In the 1980s, Hussein unleashed a campaign of
violence against the Kurds that killed more than
100,000 in northern Iraq, according to international
human rights groups. Hussein also crushed a Kurdish
revolt following the Persian Gulf War. U.S. forces
later enforced a no-fly zone that gave Kurds enough
protection to declare autonomy.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has said he
wants the Kurdish region to remain part of Iraq. But
separatist sentiment pervades his homeland.
More than 90 percent of voters questioned in
Kurdistan during January's national elections said
they wanted independence, according to a frequently
cited survey conducted at polling places.
The debate over how much autonomy to give Kurds in
the north, Shiites in the south, and Sunnis in the
center and west of the country has become one of the
most difficult issues to be settled before Iraq can
draft a constitution.
Kurdish leaders have been audacious in pushing their
claims. This week, they unveiled a map -- which they
wanted appended to the new constitution -- that lays
claim to hundreds of miles of territory extending
south of Baghdad. The territory includes the
disputed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Another Kurdish official, Mullah Bakhtiyar, later
told the Associated Press that the extended boundary
was a "red line" for Kurds and that they were
committed to it.
A Western diplomat on Friday urged members of the
constitutional committee to maintain "flexibility
and realism."
The diplomat, speaking to reporters in Baghdad under
the agreement that he not be named, also appealed to
the constitution's framers to stick to the Aug. 15
deadline for having a draft constitution approved by
the National Assembly. The charter would then go
before Iraqi voters.
"You kick this down the road six months, it's going
to look like the whole process is blocked," the
diplomat said.
The diplomat also said a draft he saw Friday had
removed a stipulation that family matters such as
divorce and inheritance be governed by the laws of
an individual's religious sect. Some Iraqis had
feared that religious law under the rule could be
used to limit the rights of women. The official
stressed, however, that the wording of the
constitution was changing daily.
Work on the constitution continues despite the
walkout of more than a dozen Sunni Arabs after the
assassination Tuesday of a fellow Sunni member of
the committee.
In attacks Friday, a roadside bomb killed a U.S.
Marine west of Baghdad, and news agencies reported
that gunmen wounded an Iraqi army captain and killed
his 23-year-old wife. The couple had been married
one day.
Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Omar Fekeiki
contributed to this report
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