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New Kurdish Leader Asserts Agenda
29.7.2009
By Sam Dagher
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July
29, 2009
ERBIL-Hewlêr,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', —
The president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan
region, Massoud Barzani, on Tuesday rejected
proposals by the United Nations to resolve Iraq’s
explosive internal border disputes, and reiterated
his determination to proceed with a contentious
local constitution.
Mr. Barzani, newly empowered after winning an
estimated 70 percent of the vote in the region’s
presidential and parliamentary elections on
Saturday, made the remarks in his first interview
with the news media since the vote.
“Regrettably, the recommendations of the United
Nations are unrealistic,” Mr. Barzani said,
referring to a report by the United Nations in April
outlining options for the settlement of territorial
disputes that threaten Iraq’s fragile stability.
They included making Kirkuk Province — including the
oil-rich city of Kirkuk that is claimed by Kurds,
Sunni Arabs and Turkmens — into an autonomous
region.
American officials have repeatedly stated their
support for a United Nations-brokered solution.
“We will not accept that the United Nations or
anyone else present us with alternatives to Article
140,” he added, referring to the clause in Iraq’s
national Constitution that calls for a census
followed by a referendum to settle the fate of areas
including Kirkuk.
Tensions have been aggravated by the presence of
Kurdish troops in parts of the contested areas. The
situation worsened in June when the region’s
Parliament, overwhelmingly controlled by the two
governing parties, including Mr. Barzani’s party,
the Kurdistan Democratic Party, approved a draft
constitution that enshrined Kurdish rights to the
disputed territories.
Although the document states that the final
demarcation of the region’s boundaries is subject to
Article 140,www.ekurd.net
it is unequivocal in its assertion that the disputed
territories are inseparable from the “geographic and
historic entity” called Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Mr. Barzani said one reason he agreed to put off a
referendum on the regional Constitution that was to
have been held during Saturday’s elections was a
request this month from Vice President Joseph R.
Biden Jr. and other American officials.
“They asked if it was possible to postpone it
because the timing was inappropriate,” he said.
Mr. Barzani said he was determined to put the
constitution to a referendum this fall. Such a move
would place him on a collision course not only with
the central government, which opposes the document
in its current form, but also with a new Kurdish
political coalition that did surprisingly well on
Saturday.
Shaho Saeed, a top official in the coalition, Gorran,
said his movement filed a complaint this month with
Iraq’s federal court in Baghdad that questioned the
legitimacy of the process that the previous regional
Parliament adopted to approve the constitution.
Mr. Saeed said Gorran opposed the document because
it gave powers to Mr. Barzani “that exceed the
powers of Parliament and the judiciary.” Gorran
wants the proposed constitution redrafted, he said.
Although the region’s two governing parties,
including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, retain a
comfortable majority to form the next government,
Gorran appeared to have clinched at least 25 of the
new Parliament’s 111 seats, according to preliminary
results.
With the two parties expected to remain firmly in
control of Parliament, Mr. Barzani said that no one
has the two-thirds majority needed to redraft the
document.
“The new Parliament has no right to redraft the
constitution,” he said. “It is over.”
Mr. Barzani said he welcomed the emergence of an
opposition movement like Gorran, but issued a
warning to those who might interpret it as a
loosening of the grip of the two parties that
control the region’s security forces, economy and
patronage network.
“If any regional country or even Baghdad interferes
in an internal matter,www.ekurd.net
or any individual inside the region conspires
against the region’s security and well-being,” he
said, “actions will be taken in accordance with the
law against those who want to undermine the unity of
the Kurdish house.”
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
nytimes com
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