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Top Kurd warns of automatic joining of
Kirkuk to Kurdistan region
7.2.2008
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February 7, 2008
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- A top Kurd in the Kirkuk Provincial Council
warns of joining Iraqi Kurdistan automatically if a
referendum for the oil-rich Kurdish province doesn't
take place.
Iraq's Constitution calls for a referendum for
voters in Kirkuk and other disputed territories in
Iraq's northern area, just outside the official area
controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
A long process, capped by a referendum, was to take
place by Dec. 31, 2007. A U.N.-orchestrated
agreement was reached days before that date, giving
all sides six months to figure out a solution.
Iraq's Kurdish leaders demand a vote while Arabs,
Turkomen and others want a negotiated settlement.
"We understand and are in favor of the U.N.'s idea
of how to implement Article 140," said Councilmember
Mohammed Kamal, who is a member of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party,www.ekurd.net
one of the two main
Kurdish parties in Iraq, the al-Mashriq newspaper
reports. "If the international and Iraqi efforts
fail we will be in favor of following the choice of
the original inhabitants of Kirkuk as well as the
choice of the official and legal Kirkuk council that
was elected in 2005."
Saddam Hussein kicked Kurds and other ethnicities
out of Kirkuk and the disputed territories,
replacing them with Arab Muslims, mostly Sunni. He
also redrew the provincial boundaries, taking out
territories that, not coincidentally, included large
oil reserves.
An estimated 15 billion of Iraq's 115 billion
barrels are located in the Kirkuk fields. It's also
the start of a pipeline sending crude to Iraq's
biggest refinery, in Baiji, and exporting oil to
Turkey.
"If the government waivers in implementing the
article the solution will then be determined by the
will of the inhabitants of Kirkuk and its councils,"
Kamal said. "They will deal with the Iraqi
government through the KRG."
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and leader of
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, recently
visited Kirkuk and met with leaders, including its
governor.
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,www.ekurd.net
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.", Kirkuk is historically a Kurdish city.
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.
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.
Under article 140 of Iraq’s constitution a
referendum must be held on whether the city secedes
to control of the Kurdistan region al government KRG.
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 July 2008.
UPI | Agencies
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