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Kurdish MP denies secret contacts with
Turkmen over Kirkuk
12.1.2008
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January 12 2008
BAGHDAD, -- MP in the Kurdistan Coalition
(KC) on Friday denied reports on secret contacts
between his bloc and Turkmen to declare Kirkuk as an
independent federal region.
"The Kurdistan Coalition stressed the implementation
of article 140 of the constitution, rejecting all
calls for declaring Kirkuk as an independent
region," Mohsin al-Sadoon told the independent news
agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
All parliamentary blocs, except for the Kurdistan
Coalition (KC), call for postponing the
implementation of the contentious
article.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk , an
important and mixed city of Kurds, Arabs, Christians
and Turmen.www.ekurd.net
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, was scheduled to be held by the end of
the past year on including the city into the
Kurdistan region, but the UN mediated to extend its
time to next July.
The Kurdish lawmaker pointed out "the regions'
residents have the right to decide their condition
through a referendum." "There are several Turkmen
leaders who support the implementation of article
140," he noted.
KC is the second largest bloc in the Iraqi
parliament with 58 out of a total 275 seats.
VOI
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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