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Kurdistan parliament meets over Article
140, UN envoy present
17.12.2007
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December
17, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', --
Iraq's Kurdistan parliament held its regular session
on Monday to debate the controversial article on
Kirkuk status in the presence of UN secretary
general's envoy to Iraq.
In a session presided over by Speaker Adnan
al-Mufti, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special
representative for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura,
proposed an extension of the implementation of
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution.
Meanwhile, al-Mufti said that the parliament will
discuss the proposal after the holiday of the Eid
al-Adha (The Greater Bairam) is over.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk, Kurds
seek to include the city in the autonomous Iraq's
Kurdistan region, while Sunni Arabs, Turkmen and
Shiite Arabs oppose the incorporation.www.ekurd.net
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.
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.
The article currently stipulates that all Arabs in
Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in
southern and central Iraqi areas, and formerly
displaced residents returned to Kirkuk.
A referendum, provided for in the Iraqi
constitution, was scheduled to be held by the end of
the current year on including the city into the
Kurdistan region.
An Iraqi parliament vote in early September extended
the work of the concerned committee until the end of
2007,www.ekurd.net
delaying the referendum
on Kirkuk's status that was expected by the end of
2007.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)
said in a press release earlier that there is a
general agreement between political leaders and
Kurdistan premier "on the urgent need to initiate a
process in order to accelerate the implementation of
Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution."
Meanwhile
Nechirvan Barzani,www.ekurd.net
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.
VOI | AFP
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