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WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (AFP) - 11h19 - A high-level
Kurdish representative in the United States warned
Monday that Kurds will not back down from their
demand for turning Iraq into a federal state, and
the ethnic group has already made all the
concessions it could.
"Federalism is the absolute minimum the people of
Iraqi Kurdistan will accept," Qubad Talabani,
representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government
in the United States and son of Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani, wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
"Certainly, none should expect Kurds to reverse the
progress that we have made in setting up functioning
institutions such as the Kurdistan Regional
Government and the elected Kurdistan National
Assembly," the envoy pointed out.
The warning came as representatives of various Iraqi
factions scrambled to meet a midnight deadline for
presenting the draft of the country's permanent
constitution.
But serious stumbling blocks, including the future
organization of the Iraqi state, women's rights and
the role of Islam, remained.
Iraqi Sunnis were particularly opposed to making
Iraq a federal state, warning it could lead to a
breakup of the country.
But Talabani said the Kurds were willing to live
only in a federal Iraq, in which political and
economic powers rested with federal regions and the
national government retained jurisdiction over just
foreign and national defense policy.
"The danger is that some US officials, desperate to
meet the final deadline, will ask us to concede on
core principles," the envoy pointed out. "So while
concessions are required to break the impasse, the
Kurds know that many of these concessions were
already made during the talks on Iraq's current
interim constitution, the Transitional
Administrative Law."
AFP
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