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Pledge to hold referendum on Kirkuk's fate
by end of 2007
20.11.2007
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November
20, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- A referendum to decide the future status of
the province of Kirkuk will take place at the end of
the year, according to a senior minister in the
autonomous region of Kurdistan in 'northern Iraq'.
The minister for the affairs of external areas in
the autonomous region, Muhammad Ihsan, said the
government intends to proceed with the referendum.
"The referendum on the status of the contested
province of Kirkuk will take place at the end of the
year, with the collaboration and coordination of the
electoral commission," he said.
The Kirkuk referendum is part of a plebiscite that
will decide whether the Kurdish regions in the Iraqi
governates of Diyala, Kirkuk and Ninawa will become
part of the Kurdistan region.
The referendum was initially scheduled for
mid-November and is now scheduled to be held before
31 December. But Iran has called for a further delay
of two years and there is speculation that it will
be postponed again.
Ihsan told the media that the government of Baghdad
is willing to implement article 140 of the
constitution , which is designed to reverse the
Arabisation policies of Saddam Hussein.
But he said other authorities had not co-operated
sufficiently in relation to respecting the decisions
of the council of ministers.
On this question, the head of the Kurdish Alliance
in the Iraqi parliament Fuad Maasum has appealed for
a meeting between the three presidents of Iraq to
discuss the issue of article 140 and put an end to
the differences.
In a statement on the Kurdish news portal, Bayamunir,
Maasum emphasised the "urgent need to call a meeting
between the president of the republic, the Iraqi
prime minister and the Kurdish regional president
about the issue, since the situation is very
delicate".
The Kurdish leader said article 140 affects not only
Kirkuk, but all the contested areas, for example the
administrative areas between the provinces of al-Anbar
and Karbala.
www.ekurd.net
Maasum then announced that "the session dedicated to
the examination of article 140 scheduled for today
has been postponed to the end of the week, since it
is necessary to bring together several ministers
involved in its application and ensure there are no
government obstacles".
At the same time, the leading representative from
the Kurdish Alliance, Mahmud Othman, stressed that
the census of 1957 will be adopted as the basis for
the progress of the referendum on the status of
Kirkuk.
Kurds refer to Kirkuk as the "Kurdish Jerusalem,"
www.ekurd.net
The last census was conducted in Kirkuk before
Saddam's Baath Party took power in 1968. At the
time, the city had a majority Kurdish population.
But tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled
Kirkuk in the 1980s and 1990s when Saddam's
government implemented its "Arabization" policy.
They were replaced by pro-government Arabs from the
mainly Shiite south, after Saddam accused the Kurds
of siding with Iran in the 1980-1988 war with
Tehran.
adnkronos com
Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region and it is not under the full
control of Kurdistan Regional Government
administration, the population is a mix of majority
Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen.
lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution 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.
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