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British MP asks UK to support Kirkuk
referendum
28.2.2007 |
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February 28, 2007
London, UK,-- Bob Spink, a Conservative Member
of the UK Parliament, yesterday asked Britain’s
Defence Secretary if he agreed that the British
government should ensure that the Kirkuk referendum
takes place without outside interference.
In a House of Commons debate, Mr Spink asked Defence
Secretary Des Browne, “Does he agree that we need to
ensure that the Kirkuk referendum, which must take
place some time this year— probably in November or
December—takes place without any interference or
distraction from insurgents or bordering countries,
and will he do all in his power to ensure that the
referendum proceeds securely?”
In his response Des Browne said that the referendum
on Kirkuk should be seen as part of the overall
political settlement in Iraq. He said, “The
honourable Gentleman is perfectly correct to
identify the importance of the referendum in Kirkuk,
but it should be seen as one of a number of
agreements that were made in the political context
of the settlement that brought the national unity
Government to power in Iraq. That is not to
underestimate in any way the challenges that they
face."
The Defence Secretary added, “All the elements of
that deal need to be taken forward politically, with
the support of other countries in the region, and it
should not be allowed to be undermined by
insurgency. The honourable Gentleman urges the
Government, and me, to do everything that we can to
support that deal, and he can rest assured that we
do that daily.”
According to Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution,
the referendum on Kirkuk must be held no later than
the end of 2007. Eligible voters in Kirkuk will
decide whether they wish to be part of the Kurdistan
Region, or to remain a separate province.
The Ba’athist regime forcibly deported or expelled
tens of thousands of Kirkuk citizens, confiscated
their properties, and gerrymandered the province’s
borders in a long campaign to alter the city’s
demography. The Iraqi constitution states that the
government of Iraq shall carry out the steps
necessary to remedy those injustices and sets a
deadline for this to be completed by the end of
2007.
Both Mr Spink and Mr Browne welcomed the Kurdistan
Region’s social and economic progress. The
Conservative MP for Castle-Point said, “He [Des
Browne] knows, of course, that the Kurdish sector of
Iraq—the other Iraq, as it is known—is making
excellent progress economically, socially and
politically.”
Mr Browne added, “I am grateful to the honourable
Gentleman for reminding the House of the progress
that has been made in northern Iraq. Sometimes one
could be forgiven for thinking that it did not
exist, but many millions of people live there. It
has made quite good progress, not just since action
was taken in Iraq by our forces in coalition with
others, but prior to that, because of the protection
that we granted people from the actions that Saddam
Hussein had perpetrated in the area.”
krg org
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The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani 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, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
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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