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High-level Iraqi Kurdistan delegation to
visit Baghdad
8.1.2008
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January 8, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan Region 'Iraq',--
A high-level delegation from the Iraqi Kurdistan
region's government will head to the Iraqi capital
Baghdad within the next few weeks to resume
discussing some pending issues with the central
government, an official Kurdish source said on
Tuesday.
The delegation "will visit Baghdad to deal with the
issues of oil contracts, article 140 of the Iraqi
Constitution, the budget allocated for the Kurdistan
region within the state budget for the year 2008,www.ekurd.net
and the Kurdish
peshmerga forces," the region's spokesman, Jamal
Abdullah said.
A high-ranking Kurdish delegation under the region's
prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, had discussed
with the central government in Baghdad oil contracts
and funds allocated for the region from the state
budget as well as the funds for the Peshmerga forces
from the Iraqi Defense Ministry's budget and article
140 of the Constitution.
The Iraqi government has criticized the contracts
concluded by Kurdistan with foreign companies to
prospect for oil and considered them as "null and
void."
Kurdish officials said the Iraqi government did not
honor its agreement with the province to include the
peshmerga forces into the Baghdad Defense Ministry's
financial appropriations.
The peshmerga is the name referring to the armed
Kurdish militias that fought the former Iraqi regime
(of Saddam Hussein).
However, after the Saddam regime withdrew his forces
from the three Kurdistan provinces of Erbil,
Sulaimaniyah, and Duhok in 1992, the militias turned
into semi-regular forces to protect the Kurdistan
region and set up two ministries for their fighters
in the region's autonomous cabinet in 2006.
According to article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution,
the problem of disputed areas should be solved over
three stages: normalization, to be followed by a
census and then a referendum among the inhabitants
on whether they want to have Kirkuk as an
independent province or have it annexed to the
Kurdistan region.
These stages should have been finalized by December
31, 2007 but were postponed for a period of six
months.
Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region,www.ekurd.net
the population is a mix of majority
Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen.
lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad.
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.
VOI
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