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Massoud Barzani: Iraq's Saddam-era flag
will not fly during a pan-Arab meeting in Kurdistan
22.1.2008
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Iraq
lawmakers discuss dispute with Kurds over national
flag
January
22, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- The latest squabble between the
central government and Kurdish authorities — a
dispute over Iraq's Saddam Hussein-era flag —
reached parliament Monday, when the Sunni Arab
speaker of the 275-seat house met with senior
lawmakers to find a way out of the crisis.
The Kurdistan region had mostly flown the Iraqi
national flag along with its own since its creation
under Western protection in the aftermath of the
1991 Gulf War. But the Iraq flag carries a negative
association for many Kurds, who remember Saddam's
forces hoisting it during campaigns of persecution
and poison gas. |
Massoud Barzani, the President of the autonomous Regional
Government of Kurdistan 'Iraq' |
Massoud Barzani,www.ekurd.net
President of Iraqi
Kurdistan region, banned the Iraqi flag soon after
Kurdistan's two administrations were united under
his leadership in 2006. The move caused dismay in
Baghdad but there was no outpouring of anger. The
issue came to the fore again when Barzani announced
that he won't allow the national flag to be hoisted
during a meeting next month of Arab parliamentarians
in the Kurdish city of Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdistan's
capital.
Not flying the national flag during a pan-Arab
meeting on the territory of a member nation of the
Arab League would embarrass the government of Shiite
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and attract attention
to the go-it-alone policies of Kurdish leaders.
Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and senior
government and opposition lawmakers discussed the
issue. Lawmakers said there were several
recommendations to defuse the crisis and that a vote
by the 275-seat house on a new flag was likely
Tuesday.
Among the proposals, they said, was leaving the flag
unchanged but announcing to the nation a new
explanation of the meaning of its black, red and
while colors as well as its three green stars and
Arabic words "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great."
Another proposal was for the removal of the three
stars, which are thought to symbolize Saddam's
now-dissolved Baath Party, or changing the
calligraphy of the words.
Alaa Maki, a Sunni Arab lawmaker from the Iraqi
Islamic Party, said the Kurds already have rejected
the proposal to leave the flag unchanged. Another
legislator, Haidar al-Abadi of al-Maliki's Dawa
party, said there was a tendency to keep the changes
down to a minimum to head off a possible popular
backlash.
"It's a potentially explosive issue and we need to
tread carefully," he said.
Tension between the Kurds and al-Maliki's government
rose when Kurdish authorities signed several deals
with foreign oil companies without Baghdad's
involvement.www.ekurd.net
The government says it
doesn't recognize the deals. The 2008 fiscal budget
has also been stalled in parliament because the
Kurds want to set aside a chunk of the defense
expenditure for its own force, the peshmerga.
Tensions also are simmering over the future of
Kirkuk, an oil-rich Kurdish city that Kurds want to
annex to their region over the opposition of Arab
and Turkomen residents. The government, aware of the
sensitivity of the issue, is counseling extreme
caution on the question of Kirkuk.
The Arab-Kurdish differences go to the heart of a
wider debate over the future shape of Iraq. A
constitution adopted in a nationwide referendum in
2005 recognizes Kurdish self-rule and provides a
legal mechanism for other areas to govern
themselves. But an overwhelming majority of Sunni
Arabs voted against the document and now demand that
it be amended to address their grievances over
issues of identity and the extent of self-rule that
provinces should have.
Last week, nearly 150 Arab lawmakers, both Shiite
and Sunni, issued a statement criticizing what they
claimed to be overreaching by the Kurds and alleging
that their unilateral approach to oil and other
major issues threatened national unity.
Kurdish politicians dismissed the statement as
negative and unhelpful.
AP
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