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Rice on surprise visit to Kirkuk, the
Kurdish Jerusalem
18.12.2007
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December
18, 2007
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made
an unannounced visit Tuesday to the city that Iraq's
Kurds call their Jerusalem, an oil-rich territory
claimed by many where the United States says it sees
new signs of cooperation and progress.
Right after her arrival in Kirkuk on Tuesday
morning, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
held a closed meeting with high-level Kurdish
officials from the province as well as others from
Turcoman and Kurdish parties, an official source in
Kirkuk said.
Rice was seeing members of a civilian-military
reconstruction unit based in Kirkuk and meeting
provincial politicians of all stripes. She was
seeing Iraq's central leadership later in Baghdad.
Such reconstruction units were expanded along with
the escalation of U.S. forces President Bush ordered
this year. |
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice |
Sunni Arabs ended a
yearlong political boycott earlier this month in the
Kurdish city of Kirkuk - the hub of Iraq's northern
oil fields - under a deal that sets aside government
posts for Arabs. It was the biggest step yet toward
unity ahead of a referendum on the area's future.
Rice was highlighting that development, although a
separate ethnic group is still boycotting the
provincial governing council, and the new role of
the United Nations in resolving the future of
disputed Kirkuk.
Rice's visit is her first since a surprise joint
appearance with Bush and Defense Secretary Robert
Gates in September, ahead of a report card to
Congress on Iraq's progress.www.ekurd.net
The assessment gave
disappointing marks to Iraqi political efforts,
which remain mired in political squabbling and
sectarian maneuvering, and better grades to
U.S.-assisted security benchmarks.
Kirkuk is an especially coveted city for both the
Shiite-dominated Iraqi government in Baghdad and the
Kurdish one in Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdistan's capital.
Kurds want to incorporate it into their self-rule
area, but the idea has met stiff resistance from
Arabs and a constitutionally required referendum on
the issue was delayed to next year.
Much of Iraq's vast oil wealth lies under the ground
in the region, as well as in the Shiite-controlled
south. Kurds refer to Kirkuk as the ``Kurdish
Jerusalem,'' and control of the area's oil resources
and its cultural attachment to Kurdistan have been
hotly contested.
``It truly is the crossing point for every one of
Iraq's ethnicities, every one of Iraq's religions
and sects,'' said David Satterfield, Rice's top
adviser for Iraq. ``Kirkuk is often identified as a
flashpoint for the future of Iraq.''
The U.N. sent a special representative to Iraq last
month who will help manage competing interests
leading up to a referendum now expected in 2008.
Iraq's constitution required the referendum by the
end of this year.
The U.N. representative, Staffan de Mistura,
replaces a U.N. diplomat assassinated in Baghdad in
2003, just months into the U.S.-led liberation. The
U.N. pulled its operations back and resisted a
high-profile role until now.
Satterfield said preparing for the Kirkuk referendum
is an example of a job best done by a world body
such as the U.N. instead of by the United States.
Turkey and other countries in the region with
Kurdish minorities have long feared that Kurdish
control of Kirkuk's vast wealth would encourage
Kurds toward declaring independence from Iraq - a
move that Iraq's neighbors could not tolerate.
Tension over the issue spiked when Sunni Arab
lawmakers walked out of the provincial council in
November 2006, claiming discrimination by the
Kurdish majority.www.ekurd.net
They ended their boycott
after Kurdish lawmakers agreed to allot one-third of
government jobs to Arabs and appoint an Arab as
deputy governor.
``We see a logjam being broken here,'' Satterfield
said.
Kurds are generally thought to have a slight
majority in the province, with Sunni Arabs close
behind, though a census has not been conducted in 50
years.
Provinces cannot schedule new elections until
passage of a law known as the Provincial Powers Act,
which is currently mired in Iraq's parliament in
Baghdad.
Mistrust between Arabs and Kurds runs deep, and even
the province's name sparks controversy. Kurds,
Turkomen and most Sunni Arabs call the province
Kirkuk, the same name as its capital city. But many
Shiite Arabs, who came here by the tens of thousands
under Saddam Hussein's ``Arabization'' program,
refer to the province as Tamim, the Arabic word for
``to nationalize.''
Notably, Rice was not holding a separate meeting
with the semiautonomous Kurdish leadership while in
Kirkuk. Kurdish leaders have chafed under U.S.
demands for greater inclusion in the Baghdad
government and swifter work to complete a framework
law for managing and distributing Iraq's oil wealth.
The last time Rice visited the region, last year,
she held a press conference on a stage decorated
with Kurdish flags instead of the Baghdad standard.
Kurdish leaders also resented U.S. pressure this
fall to do more to hunt rebels who use the territory
for cross-border attacks in Turkey.
Iraqi leaders complained Monday that Turkey had not
coordinated with Baghdad before sending dozens of
warplanes to bomb Kurdish rebel targets in northern
Iraq. The target area was in the Kurdish region Rice
visited, although some distance from Kirkuk.
Sunday's assault was the largest aerial attack in
years against the outlawed separatist group.
Turkey's military chief said the strikes used U.S,
intelligence, and U.S. officials said Washington was
informed of the plan.
AP
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,www.ekurd.net
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.
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