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Iraqi Premier Orders Kurds To Fly Iraqi
Flag
3.9.2006
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Baghdad, Iraq,
September 3, -- Iraq's prime minister issued a stern
rebuke to ethnic Kurds on Sunday after the
autonomous
Kurdistan region ordered the national Iraqi flag
be replaced by the Kurdish tricolour on government
buildings in Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office issued a
statement that not only defended the national flag
but implied that the Kurds' own banner was
illegitimate.
"The Iraqi flag is the only flag that should be
raised over any square inch of Iraq," read the brief
message, which did not refer directly to the
controversy.
Maliki is an Arab from the Shi'ite Muslim majority.
Insubstantial though it may be, the symbolism of the
dispute exposes an increasingly bitter rift between
Arabs and Kurds, the second great threat to Iraq's
survival as a state after the growing sectarian
conflict between Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites. |
Iraqi Prime minister Jawad al-Maliki
Photo:AP |
Last week, Kurdish officials said the president of
the autonomous Kurdistan region, Massoud Barzani,
had issued Decree No. 60, ordering the lowering at
official sites of the red, white and black Iraqi
flag, which many Kurds associate with the Arab
nationalism and repression of Saddam Hussein's Baath
party.
Instead, the red, white and green Kurdish banner
with a sun motif at the centre becomes obligatory:
"All government sites that used to raise the
Baathist flag must lower it and hoist the flag of
Kurdistan in its place," the order states.
AFP
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