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Iraq Kurds pass new constitution to
include Kirkuk
25.6.2009
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June
25, 2009
ERBIL-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', —
Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan on Wednesday
passed a new
constitution in which it laid claim to the disputed
oil-rich province of Kirkuk, a move likely to
increase ethnic tension.
The text, which also said that areas within Nineveh
and Diyala provinces were part of Iraqi Kurdistan,
was approved by 96 of the 111 MPs in the regional
parliament in Erbil.
The document will be put before Kurdish voters for
ratification on July 25, the same day that the
region holds parliamentary and presidential
elections.
However, seven MPs
walked out of
Wednesday's parliamentary session and declared the
vote illegal because the legislature's mandate had
ended on June 4.
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The Kurdistan region’s Parliament |
The United Nations on
April 22 handed over to the Baghdad government an
eagerly awaited report on disputed areas of Iraq,
including Kirkuk*, in which it refused to
contemplate the division of the deeply-contested
province.
The Kurds have long striven to expand their northern
territory beyond its current three provinces to
other areas where the population was historically
Kurdish,www.ekurd.net
an ambition that has
been bitterly contested by the Arabs who were
settled there in large numbers under Saddam
Hussein's ousted regime.
In order to dilute historic Kurdish majorities, a
number of provincial boundaries were also redrawn so
as to include Arab populations and minority groups,
further stoking ethnic tensions.
The regional government's new constitution refers to
Kurdistan being "composed of Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs,
Chaldeans, Syriac, Assyrians, Armenians and others
who are citizens of the Kurdistan region."
"This is an important and historic day," said the
Kurdish parliament spokesman Adnan al-Mufti.
"For the first time the people of Kurdistan took
steps to be the owner of their own constitution and
to exercise their natural right."
He said the constitution "recognises and respects
the Islamic identity of the majority of the people
of Kurdistan in Iraq" and the "full religious rights
of Christians and Yazidis".
Kurdistan, whose capital is Erbil in Iraq's north,
has its own flag which is raised beside the federal
flag, and also has its own slogan, national anthem
and national day.
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." Kurds see it as the rightful and
perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas through having back its
Kurdish 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.
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,
AFP | Agencies
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