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Arabs and Kurds reach accord in Iraq's
Kurdish city of Kirkuk
3.12.2007
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December
3, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Arab and Kurdish parties in Iraq's oil city
of Kirkuk have clinched a deal under which Arabs
will end their boycott of the provincial council in
return for a more equal sharing of power, an
official said on Monday.
The "in principle" agreement was reached on Sunday,
according to the chief of the Kirkuk provincial
council, Razgar Ali, a leader of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) headed by Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani.
Ethnic Turkmen, however, have refused to join the
agreement and will continue boycotting the 41-member
council.
Kirkuk has been gripped by ethnic tension since the
US-led liberation of 2003,www.ekurd.net
with Kurds demanding
that the city be incorporated into the autonomous
Kurdistan region and Arab and ethnic Turkmen
opposing this, saying they fear non-Kurdish
communities will be marginalised.
A referendum to determine the future of the city,
which sits on the second-largest oil and gas
reserves in Iraq, was to have been held before the
end of the year but officials acknowledge there is
too little time left.
Under the weekend deal the six Arab members of the
provincial council will end their boycott, called
more than a year ago in protest at what they said
was the "domination" of Kurdish parties in the
multi-ethnic council.
The two major Kurdish parties, the PUK and the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), occupy 26 seats in
the council while the Turkmen Front has the
remaining nine.
"It is a positive step towards building Kirkuk and
bolstering peaceful co-existence in a partnership in
which decisions will be made without injustice,"
said Ali, calling at the same time on the Turkmen
Front to join the agreement.
An Arab member of the council, Rakan Saeed al-Juburi,
called for speedy implementation of the agreement.
"We will get, for the first time, the post of
Kirkuk's deputy governor and the deputy head of the
judiciary council. Posts will be distributed equally
-- 32 percent each for Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen and
the remaining four percent for the Chaldo-Assyrian,www.ekurd.net
Armenian and Sabiah
minorities," Juburi said.
A Turkmen official declared that Kirkuk's problems
"cannot be resolved by compensating one side while
marginalising another.
"We have demanded an end to the arrest and
marginalisation of Turkmen and the need to adopt the
Turkmen language officially in Kirkuk, but there has
been no response," said Ali Mahdi, deputy leader of
Turkmen Eli party.
Kirkuk's population is estimated to be one million,
a mixture of Turkmen, Kurds and Arabs with a Chaldo-Assyrian
minority.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said at
the end of a six-day Iraqi visit on Sunday that
there was no time left this year to hold a
referendum, which is required under article 140 of
the Iraqi constitution.
"It is my understanding that an effort will be made
in the new year to get a process going forward that
deals with article 140 of the constitution and the
issue of Kirkuk," he told reporters in Baghdad.
AFP
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.
www.ekurd.net
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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