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Arab, Turkmen members boycott meetings of
Kirkuk's provincial council 16.11.2006
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KIRKUK,
Kurdistan-Iraq, November 16, -- Arab and ethnic
Turkmen members said Thursday they were suspending
their participation in a council that governs an
oil-rich province in northern Iraq, charging that
the body is unfairly dominated by members of the
region's Kurdish majority.
In a statement, six Arab members, including both
Sunni and Shiite Muslims, said they were joining
nine Turkmen in boycotting the 41-seat council
because their calls for consensus have been ignored
by those who hold 26 seats controlled by Kurds or
their allies.
Ethnically-mixed, Kirkuk is at the center of a
struggle for power between Arabs and ethnic Turkmen
and Kurds, who claim the area as their own and
eventually hope it will be included in their
self-rule enclave in northern Iraq. Ethnic tensions
have fueled a recent wave of violence in the
provincial capital that has targeted the U.S.-led
coalition forces and the new Iraqi government.
During his 23-year tenure in power, Saddam Hussein
had tried to give Kirkuk province an Arab majority,
forcing thousands of Kurds to move out and bringing
in Arab residents to replace them.
Kirkuk council head Rezgar Ali, a Kurd, urged Arabs
and Turkmen to "adopt a constructive dialogue by
sitting at the table with (Kurdish council members)
and reach an agreement that will end their boycott."
But Jalil Agha, a leader in the council's Turkmen
faction, told The Associated Press that "Turkmen
parties will not abandon their right of Iraq's unity
and Kirkuk's Iraqi identity."
The Turkmen have a special attachment to Kirkuk
because it was under Turkmen control during the
Ottoman Empire.
Arab tribal leader Abdul-Rahman Munshid al-Asi
called for equal representation among ethnic groups
living in the city.
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
speaking Thursday during a news conference with his
visiting Iraqi counterpart Nouri al-Maliki in
Ankara, urged power-sharing among ethnic groups in
Kirkuk.
Turkey is known to have close links with the Turkmen
and strongly opposes a Kurdish domination of the
city that would lead to annexing it to Iraq's three
northern provinces that form Kurdistan.
The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000
Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in
the 1970s,
to "Arabize" the city and the region's oil industry.
The Kurdish city of Kirkuk lies on the border south
of the Kurdistan autonomous region,
Kirkuk city is not under the full control of
Kurdistan Regional Government administration. A
referendum is to be held in late 2007 to decide
whether the oil-rich Kurdish province should be
annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region
in Iraq's north.
AP | Agencies
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