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Iraqi parliament misses deadline for
electoral roll of December Kirkuk's referendum
31.7.2007
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July
31 2007
Baghdad, -- Iraq's government has missed its
deadline to compile a list of people eligible to
vote in a December referendum that will determine
the fate of a large, oil-rich and bitterly disputed
swathe of the country, officials of northern Iraq's
Kurdistan autonomous region said on Moday.
Politicians from the Shia-led bloc that dominates
the government and the Kurdish parties that are its
main allies had agreed before the formation of the
national unity government in June 2006 that today
would be the deadline for a "census" of the
inhabitants of Kirkuk and other "disputed
territories" of northern Iraq.
However, the deadline appears to have passed without
a census being completed, raising doubts as to
whether the government is willing to follow through
on its commitments.
The failure to meet the deadline "shows a lack of
seriousness from all parties to implement. . .
articles that were in the constitution that people
had agreed and voted upon," said Falah Mustafa Bakir,
head of the Kurdistan regional government's
department of foreign relations.
For many Kurds, the referendum is a chance to
reclaim Kirkuk, which Jalal Talabani, Iraq's Kurdish
president, has called the "Jerusalem of Kurdistan" -
a historic capital purged of much of its non-Arab
population by the regime of Saddam Hussein, the
deposed leader.
But although Iraq's constitution calls for the
referendum - which would ask people whether they
wished to be part of the Kurdistan autonomous region
- to be held no later than December 31, many Sunni
and Shia Arabs strongly oppose Kirkuk ever becoming
part of Kurdistan.
The Article 140 process - designed to undo the "Arabisation"
policies pursued by Saddam aimed at solidifying Arab
control of northern oilfields - has also drawn
criticism from others who fear it will feed
instability.
The former regime pushed Kurds and other non-Arabs
out. Arab settlers were brought in from other parts
of the country, particularly the Shia south.
In addition, it shuffled the borders of the region's
provinces, handing away slices of Kirkuk to its
neighbours in what Kurdish officials claim was an
attempt at gerrymandering, ensuring the north's main
oilfields were in an Arab-majority province.
To reverse this demographic engineering, Arab
settlers are to be offered nearly $16,000 in
compensation and land in their home provinces to
leave. Kurdish officials claim 16,000 families have
voluntarily signed up.
Iraq's presidency council was supposed to have
addressed the border issue by restoring the north's
pre-Arabisation administrative boundaries. But the
approval of parliament has yet to be granted.
ft com
**
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.
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