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Kamal Kirkuki: "Any attack on Kurdistan
will be a declaration of war against Iraq"
14.4.2007 |
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April
14, 2007
Erbil, Kurdistan region (Iraq) -- Turkish
armed forces chief General Yasar Buyukanit's request
on Thursday to be allowed to carry out military
strikes against Kurdish separatists based in
northern Iraq does not in any way serve the
interests of Iraq and Turkey, said the deputy
speaker of Iraqi Kurdistan's parliament, Kamal
Kirkuki. "Any attack on Iraqi Kurdistan will be
considered tantamount to a declaration of war
against Iraq," Kirkuki warned.
Speaking to journalists late on Thursday, Kirkuki
said he thought it improbable that the Turks would
turn their threats into action. "The excuses and
motivations adopted by the Turks to justify an
attack on Kurdistan are baseless, as we have not
provided any financial or logistic support to the
causes that they accuse us of backing," he
underlined.
Ankara on Monday renewed its demand for US and Iraqi
officials to crack down on militants from the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). "An operation into
Iraq is necessary," said Buyukanit, adding that the
"PKK has huge freedom of movement in Iraq . . . It
has spread its roots in Iraq."
Kirkuki stressed that "the latest declarations from
Ankara stem from the internal crisis afflicting
Turkey and have nothing to do with us."
In other reactions, the head of the Turkmen bloc in
the parliament of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan
region, Karkhi Alti Barmak, said that "Turkmen
reject the accusations of the Turkish military
agianst Kurdistan and consider it meddling in the
internal affairs of the region and of Iraq."
adnki com
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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