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BAGHDAD, Iraq -
Once an oppressed minority under Saddam Hussein, the
Kurds of Iraq’s north are now the kingmakers,
hosting a string of visiting politicians from Sunni
Arab and Shiite Muslim factions for consultations on
shaping a future government.
The Dec. 15 national elections gave a lead role to
the largely secular and independence-minded Iraqi
Kurds because a two-thirds majority is needed to
control parliament and no group is expected to come
close to that.
Accounting for about 15 percent of the country’s
people, the pragmatic Kurds say they will work with
anyone willing to offer them something in return.
Independence is their ultimate prize - even if the
politicians don’t say it publicly.
Final election results may be released in the coming
week, and the Kurds are set to win about 55 seats in
the 275-member parliament and will likely mediate
between the majority Shiites and minority Sunnis in
cobbling together a coalition government.
The current governing religious Shiite bloc, the
United Iraqi Alliance, is expected to have as many
as 130 seats, but that is far below the 184 needed
to rule on its own. Sunni groups are heading for
around 50 seats, while former Prime Minister Ayyad
Allawi’s secular bloc could get 25.
Right now, religious Sunnis and religious Shiites
are not happy with each other.
The Sunnis boycotted the first post-Saddam election
last Jan. 30 and they complained of electoral fraud
and voter intimidation in last month’s vote.
Shiites say the Sunnis complain too much about the
election and should be concentrating on the politics
of forming a government.
“The (Sunni coalition) Accordance Front has been
making threats of violence to change the results,”
Hussain al-Shahristani, a senior official in the
United Iraqi Alliance and deputy speaker in the
outgoing parliament, told The Associated Press.
“They must understand that they cannot use violence
to force their way into government.”
Ending the deadlock is where the Kurds come in.
“Kurds in Iraq are an important part of the Iraqi
equation,” said Kamran al-Karadaghi, chief of staff
to Jalal Talabani, the first Kurd to be Iraq’s
president and leader of one of the two main Kurdish
political parties.
“After Saddam’s fall, Iraqi Kurds abandoned their
semi-independence to become part of a new Iraq ... a
very effective part of it,” al-Karadaghi said.
Following the election for an interim legislature a
year ago, Talabani helped broker often bitter
negotiations between the Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni
communities, leading to the government of current
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is a Shiite.
“Of course the Kurds are an important factor now ...
They will occupy a big chunk of the assembly,” said
Nassir al-Ani of the Accordance Front, the main
Sunni Arab coalition.
He and two colleagues from his group met at year’s
end with Kurdistan regional President Massoud
Barzani in Irbil to talk about the shape of a future
government.
Al-Ani said his delegation asked Barzani to “put
pressure on other parties” to meet Sunni demands for
greater minority rights.
The Sunnis are demanding that voting be held again
in some provinces, including Baghdad - the country’s
largest with 59 seats in parliament.
Sunnis also are seeking Kurdish help in pressuring
Shiites to accept amendments to the constitution
adopted by national referendum in October, including
a provision that keeps the central government weak
in favor of strong provincial governments.
However, the leader of the fundamentalist Shiite
religious bloc, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, insisted
Tuesday that Shiites would not allow any substantive
constitutional changes.
Al-Jaafari, the prime minister, also visited Barzani
for talks as did al-Hakim, who also met with
Talabani.
Al-Hakim’s talks in the north focused on who should
get the top 12 government jobs, including Cabinet
posts. The meetings were also widely seen as part of
an effort to force Sunni Arab groups to come to the
bargaining table.
The Shiite bloc needs the Kurds to form a
government.
The Kurds may want Shiites to agree to more powers
for the president as a counterbalance to Shiite
strength. The constitution gives nearly all
executive powers to the prime minister, and Talabani
has indicated he is not interested in a second term
if the presidency is not given more authority.
“All the main political groups, especially the
alliance, is talking about Talabani as a president
for the next four years. If they really want him to
be president, they should accept” his condition, al-Karadaghi
said.
Kurdish leaders say privately that they do not favor
al-Jaafari remaining as prime minister. Talabani and
al-Jaafari did not get along in the eight months of
the interim government. Talabani, in particular,
felt al-Jaafari sought to monopolize power and
threatened him with a “no confidence” vote in the
interim legislature.
Talabani said recently that there was an agreement
in principle on a forming national unity government
with representatives of all the factions, but that
striking a deal would be harder than after last
year’s election. “The devil is in the details,”
Talabani told reporters.
Kurdish politicians say they enjoy good relations
with both Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs, even
though for decades the Kurds - who are mostly Sunnis
- suffered under the brutal regime of Saddam, also a
Sunni.
But Kurdish leaders still have grievances. The Iraqi
constitution allows their region autonomy close to
independence, but not - for the time being - the oil
city of Kirkuk. However, the Kurds can drill for oil
and own any newly discovered reserves.
Distrust of both Sunnis and Shiites persists among
the Kurdish population, a majority of whom want
independence, not federalism. More than 2 million
people favored independence in an unofficial
referendum last January.
Iraq’s neighbors, notably Turkey, fear such a move
would inspire their own Kurdish populations to renew
separatist struggles.
For 13 years after the end of the 1991 Gulf War,
Kurds lived in a semiautonomous region under the
protection of Western warplanes, and Kurdish
language and customs flourished.
Many Sunni Arabs, who comprise an estimated 20
percent of Iraq’s population and have long opposed
Kurds’ aspirations, are beginning to accept the
notion of a Kurdish federation in the north - as
long as the rest of the country doesn’t follow their
example.
“We don’t want to carve up the country into
different parts,” said al-Ani, the Accordance Front
official. “But the Kurdish federation is a fact on
the ground. Kurds have their own ethnicity, customs
and traditions.”
AP
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