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Iraqi parliament's mission to Kirkuk ends
in failure
28.5.2009
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May
28, 2009
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— An Iraqi parliament's fact-finding mission
to multiethnic Kirkuk has deadlocked in failure and
returned to Baghdad to report to the major political
factions, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq reports.
Sheikh Burhan al-Assi, a member of the Arab bloc on
the Kirkuk provincial council, told the station that
a consensus solution agreed on by the three
communities in the city -- the Arabs, Kurds, and
Turkomans -- is the only way toward a settlement.
Assi added that "the fact-finding mission has failed
because of influences from outside Kirkuk."
Ali Mehdi, a spokesman for the Turkoman bloc on the
provincial council, told Radio Free Iraq that the
Turkoman community sees the solution to the Kirkuk
issue in "declaring the province a special-status
zone or a region in its own right."
Awat Muhammad, a member of the Kurdish bloc on the
provincial council,www.ekurd.net
told the broadcaster
that the fact-finding mission's return to Baghdad
"unfortunately shows that the three communities are
incapable of resolving their own problems."
He said "the United States and United Nations might
find themselves compelled to intercede with a new
initiative on Kirkuk."
The parliamentary fact-finding mission to Kirkuk
began early February, and when its mandate expired
on March 31 it received a two-month extension.
The mission comprises six parliamentarians
representing the Arabs, Kurds, Turkomans, and
Christians.
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.
The last ethnic-breakdown census in Iraq was
conducted in 1957, well before Saddam began his
program to move Arabs to Kirkuk. That count showed
178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and
10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in the
city.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, rferl
org | Agencies
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