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Iraq's Kurdish deputy premier warns of
strife over Kirkuk
8.1.2008
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January 8, 2008
Baghdad, -- Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime
minister warned Monday that failure to resolve the
fate of the Kurdish oil-rich city of Kirkuk could
result in more strife and accused people within the
government of blocking a solution.
"We have a choice," Dr Barham Saleh told The AP. "We
can either turn Kirkuk into an example of national
Iraqi unity ... or turn it into a battlefield for
strife between the components of Iraq."
A referendum is expected later this year on whether
Kirkuk will join the semiautonomous Kurdish zone to
its north, or continue to be ruled by Baghdad.
Saleh said it was unacceptable to leave the dispute
unresolved and accused unnamed people within the
government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
of trying to stymie a solution spelled out in the
2005 constitution. |
Dr. Barham Saleh Iraq's deputy premier |
"I am a Kurd and see Kirkuk as part of the Kurdish
region," Saleh said, explaining that because Arabs
and Turkomen — the other two main ethnic groups
inhabiting the city — see it differently,www.ekurd.net
the issue must be
resolved under current law.
Kirkuk's Arab and Turkomen residents dispute the
Kurdish claim to the city, which has over the past 4
1/2 years seen hundreds of deadly attacks with
sectarian or ethnic motives.
Leaders of Iraq's Shiite majority fear allowing
Kirkuk to join the Kurdish region could undermine
their new status as the country's dominant power,
while the once-dominant Sunni Arab minority sees the
loss of the city as a prelude to the breakup of the
nation along sectarian or ethnic lines.
Saleh, like President Jalal Talabani, is widely
viewed as a moderate Kurd and his assertion that
Kirkuk is part of the Kurdistan region reflects a
universal conviction among Kurds. But his charge
that government parties were working against a
solution in Kirkuk reflects tension between the
Kurds and their close Shiite allies.
The Kurds and Shiites, who combine for about 80
percent of Iraq's population, have been close allies
since Saddam's ouster in 2003, but recent Kurdish
assertions of independence, like the conclusion of
oil exploration deals with foreign companies,
without involving the central government, have led
to harsh public exchanges.
The constitution, which most of Iraq's Sunni Arabs
voted against in a 2005 referendum, provides for the
"normalization" of Kirkuk — allowing Kurds forcibly
moved from the city under Saddam Hussein's "Arabization"
program to return and inviting Arabs lured there
decades ago by financial reward to leave in return
for compensation.
In December 2007,
Saleh said, Kirkuk will remain a Kurdish city
despite all attempts to undermine Article 140 of the
Iraqi constitution pertaining to the city's status,
Iraq's deputy premier said.www.ekurd.net
"Several bodies oppose the implementation of Article
140," the Kurdish deputy to the Iraqi prime
minister, Barham Saleh, said in his
opening speech before the Sulaimaniyah-based
conference of civil society organizations. "Kirkuk's issue should
be domestically solved," Saleh added.
AP
Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, 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.
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