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Iraqi Kurdistan assembly postpones Kirkuk
vote
27.12.2007
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The
referendum on whether the oil-rich city should join
semiautonomous Kurdistan is put off for six months.
December
27, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan Region 'Iraq',--, The
parliament of autonomous Kurdistan region in
'northern Iraq' on Wednesday approved a United
Nations plan to delay a public vote on the future of
the Kurdish oil city of Kirkuk by six months.
Adnan Mufti, speaker of the parliament, said the
Kurdish MPs approved the plan unanimously.
The parliament "approved the suggestion presented by
UN representative in Iraq Staffan de Mistura," Mufti
said after the parliamentary session.
Of the 111 lawmakers in the Kurdistan regional
parliament, 94 voted in favor of postponing the
Kirkuk referendum. The decision came at the advice
of Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations' special
representative in Iraq.
The delay had been seen by many as inevitable, and
legislators accepted it grudgingly. Sardar Harki, a
member of parliament in Irbil, the Kurdistan
capital, said the Iraqi government as well as
Kurdistan leaders "should exert more efforts . . .
to get this issue over and done with."
A parliament member who opposed the delay, Ghafour
Makhmouri, said he did not trust the Iraqi
government to organize the referendum "in six
months, nor in the future."
Makhmouri called on the Kurdistan regional
government to draft a bill that would allow it to
claim Kirkuk and other areas seized during Saddam
Hussein's anti-Kurdish campaigns.
The referendum would allow Kirkuk residents to
decide whether they want to join the Kurdistan
region.www.ekurd.net
The oil-rich city was
subject to massive upheaval under Hussein as he
drove out Kurds and other ethnic minorities and
replaced them with Arabs.
Last week Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of
the Kurdistan government, said he favoured a
six-month extension of the vote on Kirkuk.
According to article 140 of the Iraqi constitution,
the referendum had been due to be held by the end of
2007 to decide whether the province of Kirkuk with
its oil wealth should go under the control of the
northern government.
Barzani said the vote had been delayed "for
technical reasons."
He said the six-month extension should be used for a
UN-supervised mechanism to sort out the issue of
Kirkuk, which sits on the second-largest oil and gas
reserves in Iraq.
Kirkuk has been gripped by ethnic tension since the
2003 US-led invasion, with Kurds demanding its
incorporation into the autonomous Kurdistan region,
while Arab and ethnic Turkmen oppose this, fearing
they would be marginalised.
Kirkuk was the scene of a massive population
upheaval when the then Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein staged the forced exile of tens of thousands
of Kurds,www.ekurd.net
replacing them with a
mainly Arab population from other Iraqi regions.
The city and its province are now claimed by both
the Arabs and the Kurds.
Organising the referendum has been made impossible
by the lack of any census in the region where the
relative weight of each community -- Kurds, Arabs
and Turkmen -- is an explosive subject.
The six-month extension is seen as a chance to set
up mechanisms under the United Nations to change
boundaries and look into relocating populations to
undo Saddam's policy.
The Kurds have insisted on a referendum as a
condition for their support of the Shiite-dominated
central government in Baghdad.
On December 18 US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice visited Kirkuk in a surprise trip aimed at
supporting UN reconciliation efforts.
AFP | La Times
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.
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