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Kurdistani Peshmerga forces to be incorporated into
Iraq's security system
15.4.2008
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April
15, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- A Kurdish legislator revealed at
the Iraqi parliament on Monday that the Iraqi
Kurdistan Region's talks with the Iraq's central
government in Baghdad resulted in an agreement to
incorporate the Peshmerga, or the local Kurdish
forces, into Iraq's security system.
"The region's talks with the central government
focused on three issues: the Peshmerga force and its
budget, the law on oil and gas and a timetable for
applying item 140 of the Iraqi constitution," Mhamma
Khalil, a member of parliament from the Kurdistan
Coalition (KC), told VOI.
A delegation from the autonomous Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) under the region's Prime Minister,www.ekurd.net
Nechirvan Barzani, had
talks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad with Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as senior
government officials on Saturday and Sunday.
Baghdad so far has refused to recognize all the
contracts signed by the KRG with global oil
companies to invest in the region and threatened to
ban these companies from future deals with the Iraqi
oil ministry. The Kurds, however, argue that the
contracts were "legal" and in line with Iraq's
constitution.
Maliki’s government also opposes to pay the 190,000
Kurdish Peshmerga forces from the Iraqi defense
ministry budget.
Article 140 provides for normalization of Kirkuk by
returning its Kurdish and Turkmen inhabitants and
repatriating the Arabs relocated in the city during
the former regime's time to their original provinces
in central and southern Iraq.
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.
These stages were supposed to end on December 31,
2007, a deadline that was later extended by six
months.
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."
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, VOI,
Agencies
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