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Barzani turned down a 2 billion dollars
offer from Saudi Arabia to give up Kirkuk
3.4.2007 |
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Massoud
Barzani and Dr Barham Salih turned down a 2 billion
dollars offer from Saudi Arabia to give up Kirkuk
April 3, 2007
Baghdad, -- A Shiite newspaper published in
Baghdad reported Tuesday that Kurdistan President
Massoud Barzani had turned down a 2-billion- US
dollar offer from the Saudis in return for giving up
demands to have Kurdish oil-rich of Kirkuk as the
capital of Kurdistan.
Al-Bianh al-Jadidah newspaper said that the Saudi
offer was made to Barzani and Iraqi Deputy Prime
Minister Barham Salih when they visited Saudi Arabia
last month.
The Saudis asked for a 10-year freeze on the Kurdish
demand to incorporate Kirkuk in the north of Iraq
into Kurdistan autonomous region.
The newspaper said that an Iraqi government source,
who did not want to be named, said both Barzani and
Salih had declined to give in to Saudi pressure to
give up the "Kurds' historical rights to the city."
Kirkuk city just outside 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. |
Massoud Barzani, the President of the Regional
Government of Kurdistan
Dr
Barham Salih, Iraqi Deputy PM, a Kurd |
The Iraqi Constitution mandates that a referendum on
control of Kirkuk must be held by the end of this
year to decide whether the oil-rich Kurdish province
should be annexed to the safe semiautonomous
Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
DPA
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.
The Iraqi Constitution mandates that a referendum on
control of Kirkuk must be held by the end of this
year 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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