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UN delays report on Kirkuk to avoid
tensions
30.11.2008
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November 30, 2008
BAGHDAD,— The United Nations has delayed a
report on disputed areas in Iraq, including the
oil-rich Kurdish city of Kirkuk, until after local
elections next year because it might have stirred
tensions, the U.N. envoy to Iraq said on Saturday.
"The U.N. is there to pour water on fire and not oil
on fire," Staffan de Mistura, head of the U.N.
mission in Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.
He said the U.N. analysis of Kirkuk, a city
contested by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs, might have
been used before the January 31 election to stoke
discord, rather than as the tool for finding a
resolution that it was meant to be.
"And therefore the water will come after the
election," de Mistura added.
The fate of cities claimed by different ethnic and
sectarian groups remains a powder keg issue that
could trigger a resurgence of the bloodshed that
tore through Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led liberation
and ousting of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
Bodies piled up by the hundreds as majority Shi'ites
battled minority Sunni Arabs who had dominated Iraq
under Saddam and who initially sided with al Qaeda
in confronting the invaders.
While car bombs and suicide bombings remain common,www.ekurd.net
the violence has fallen
to four-year lows, feeding hopes that Iraq has begun
to tread a path of increasing stability ahead of the
local elections and also a general election next
year. But disputes over cities like Kirkuk are far
from resolved.
Sitting over potentially rich oil fields, Kirkuk is
claimed by ethnic Kurds as their ancestral home
although it lies outside the semi-autonomous region
run by the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern
Iraq.
Kurds say Kirkuk was heavily repopulated by Arabs
moved there by Saddam to try to invalidate Kurdish
claims to the city. Turkmen residents there also
oppose Kurdish efforts to have Kirkuk included in
Kurdistan.
Tensions between the increasingly assertive Shi'ite-led
coalition of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and its
Kurdish partners are viewed as one possible
roadblock to stability.
The dispute stalled efforts to hold provincial
elections in Kirkuk. The rest of the country will
vote in January but Kirkuk will have to wait for its
own ballot.
Iraq's constitution calls for a referendum on
Kirkuk's fate, but that has been postponed. The U.N.
report on Kirkuk and 30-to-40 other disputed areas
consists of analyses of demographics,www.ekurd.net
histories, geographies,
ethnic makeup, politics and economies. It published
its findings on the first four, less-contested
districts in June.
De Mistura had said earlier this year that one
report on Kirkuk would be published by October in a
bid for a "grand deal" to end tensions. The date was
then moved to end-November.
March now seemed a more logical date, after the
elections that will determine the political makeup
of Iraq on the ground, in its cities, towns and
governorships, de Mistura said.
"The timing of the presentation of the report before
elections take place could have been interpreted, or
used, instead of as ... part of the road map for a
political calm, as an opportunity for some
tensions," de Mistura said.
He said the U.N.'s aim was to continue working on
the reports so they can be handed to Iraqi officials
when they are ready to sit down and negotiate the
destiny of the areas.
"In other words, the reports are an ingredient which
should be feeding the political dialogue, and the
time that you feed the political dialogue needs to
be well-timed," he said.
That position might frustrate Kurdish authorities,
eager for a decision. The United Nations was taking
too long, the Kurdish Regional Government said on
Saturday.
Kirkuk city is historically 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. Kurds
have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk,
which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem."
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be
followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants
decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed
to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having
it as an independent province.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
had 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.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
Reuters | Agencies
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