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Arab list decides to return to Kirkuk
provincial council
12.9.2007
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September
12, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- The Arab list in the Kirkuk provincial council
decided to end its boycott of the council and to
return to
attend the meetings after accepting its demands, an
official source from the Iraqi Republican Grouping (IRG)
said on Tuesday.
"The Arab list in the Kirkuk provincial council
decided to end its boycott and return to attend the
council's meetings after accepting its demands
within an initiative presented by the (IRG), the
source said.
The decision came after the decision taken by the
parliament on Saturday to extended the work of the
Constitutional Amendments Committee up to the end of
the House's second legislative term by January next
year, which will lead to a further delay in holding
the referendum on Kirkuk, according to the Iraqi
constitution's article number 140.
The Arab list, in coordination with the Turkomans
list in Kirkuk, boycotted the meetings of the Kirkuk
provincial council several times, calling the
Kurdish list, which has the majority in the council,
to share posts with minorities in the city.
It was scheduled for the Constitutional Amendments
Committee to end its work on 15 May, 2007, but the
differences over basic issues concerning expanding
the powers of the President of Iraq and implementing
article 140 on the oil-rich Kurdish city of Kirkuk
led to extend its mandate twice so far.
Article 140 is related to the normalization of the
situation in Kirkuk, an important and mixed city of
majority Kurds and minority of Christians and Arabs
and Turkmen. Kurds seek to include the city in the
autonomous Iraq's Kurdistan region, while Sunni
Arabs, Turkmen and Shiite Arabs oppose the
incorporation.
The article currently stipulates that all Arabs in
Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in
southern and central Iraqi areas, and formerly
displaced residents returned to Kirkuk, 250 km
northeast of Baghdad.
A referendum, provided for in the Iraqi
constitution, is scheduled to be held by the end of
the current year on a possible joining of Kirkuk to
Kurdistan region.
VOI
* 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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