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Iraqi Kurdistan Govt agree to postpone
vote on oil city of Kirkuk
17.12.2007
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December
17, 2007
Najaf, Southern Iraq, -- Iraq's Kurdistan
government has agreed to delay by six months the
referendum to decide the future of the northern
Kurdish oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the autonomous
Kurdistan government, told AFP that his government
favoured postponing the vote.
"The regional government is in favour of this
extension," said Barzani who was in Najaf to meet
influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
According to article 140 of the Iraqi constitution
the referendum had been due to be held by the end of
2007 but has been delayed "for technical reasons,"
he said.
Barzani added that the six-month extension should be
used for a UN-supervised mechanism to sort out the
issue of Kirkuk,www.ekurd.net
which sits on the
second-largest oil and gas reserves in Iraq. |
Nechirvan Barzani, Prime
Minister of
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) |
The city has been gripped by ethnic tension since
the 2003 US-led liberation, with Kurds demanding its
incorporation into the autonomous Kurdistan region,
while Arab and ethnic Turkmen oppose this, fearing
they would be marginalised.
Kirkuk is claimed by both the Arabs and the Kurds.
Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, 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.
AFP
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