|
Kurds rule out referendum delay for
disputed Kirkuk
19.7.2007 |
|
|
|
July
19 2007
Kirkuk, Kurdistan region border with (Iraq),
-- Kurdish leaders are determined to press ahead
with a referendum on the future of the oil Kurdish
city of Kirkuk, despite rising tensions over the
issue and violence that included car
bomb attacks killing more than
85 people this week.
"We must hold the referendum by the end of the
year," said Mohammed Ihsan, the Kurdish regional
government's point man on Kirkuk. "Postponing it
would mean surrender to the terrorists. We are not
willing to do that."
Ihsan, whose title is Minister of Extra Regional
Affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government, was
speaking in an interview a day after a huge truck
bomb exploded outside the local headquarters of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
"There can be no question of a delay or negotiations
on this," Ihsan said. "You don't negotiate the
constitution."
Foreign analysts have warned Kirkuk could become the
next flashpoint in the strife that has been tearing
most of Iraq apart since the 2003 U.S. liberation
that toppled Saddam Hussein.
"If the referendum is held later this year over the
objections of the other (non-Kurdish) communities,
the civil war is very likely to spread to Kirkuk and
the Kurdish region, until now Iraq's only area of
quiet and progress," said an analysis of the issue
by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
The Kurds see Kirkuk as their historical capital and
want it included in their autonomous Kurdistan
region.
But the referendum plan has run into bitter
opposition from Kirkuk's other ethnic groups,
including Turkmen and Chaldo-Assyrians, who fear
they would be forced out of the city or become
second-class citizens.
The Iraqi constitution's article 140 stipulates a
December 31, 2007 deadline for the Kirkuk referendum
-- at the end of a process that includes
"normalization," shorthand for reversing the effects
of Saddam's policy to drive Kurds out of a string of
northern cities and replace them with Arabs.
The constitutional timetable also provided for a
census to be completed by the end of July, but
neither this nor "normalization" has been
implemented.
"We are working on preparations for a voting list
based on the 1957 census," Ihsan said. At that time,
he added, Kurds made up 48.3 percent of the Kirkuk
area's population and Arabs accounted for 28.2
percent.
The Kurds say the 1957 census was the last reliable
count of Kirkuk's population before the Iraqi
monarchy was toppled and a succession of governments
began manipulating the demographics of the region in
favor of Iraqi Arabs. By 1965, according to Ihsan,
Kurds accounted for just 36.1 percent of the
population.
Now, Kurds make up the largest community in the
multiethnic city and would likely win the referendum
on its final status, which requires a simple
majority.
VOLATILE BREW
An added ingredient in the volatile Kirkuk brew is
oil -- the area has 584 wells -- and who will
control it.
Ihsan shrugged off the importance of that issue.
"The oil will be for all Iraqis," he said. "That can
be worked out."
The cabinet of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
has approved a draft hydrocarbon law to divide
Iraq's oil revenue but this has not yet been debated
by parliament.
Iraq is estimated to have the world's third-largest
oil reserves, in fields in the Shi'ite south and in
northern Iraq, mainly around Kirkuk.
Ihsan, who was educated in Britain and served as the
Kurdistan Regional Government's Human Rights
Minister before taking up his present post in May
last year, had blunt criticism for the central
government in Baghdad, whom he described as
incompetent foot-draggers.
"There are no leaders in Baghdad. There is
incompetence. And there is a new Arab chauvinism,
people who just don't accept Kurds," he said.
U.S. officials have quietly suggested to the Kurds
that they postpone the referendum but Ihsan said it
would be wrong "for the Americans to listen to
terrorist bombs more than the words of their only
friends (the Kurds) in the region."
Reuters
**
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 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.
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.
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 