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Kirkuk is indivisible part of Kurdistan,
says Kurdistan premier
30.7.2010 |
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July
30, 2010
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— Kurds have a clear vision that Kirkuk is an
indivisible part of the Kurdistan Regional
Government although others might have a different
viewpoint, according to Kurdistan Regional
Government KRG Prime Minister Barham Salih on
Thursday.
“Despite the fact that our Arab and Turkmen brothers
oppose our view that Kirkuk is part and parcel of
the Iraqi Kurdistan region, the Kurds will
eventually be triumphant in finding a legal and
constitutional solution that would win them their
rights back,” said Salih in a press conference
during a brief visit to Kirkuk.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas. |
Dr Barham Salih, Kurdistan prime minister. |
Kurds seek to include
the city in the autonomous Iraq’s Kurdistan region,
while Sunni Muslims, Turkmen and Shiites oppose the
incorporation.
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.
Massoud Barzani, president
of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region,
has said on October 28, 2009 that the
Kurds will not accept
any solution that gives Kirkuk "a special status" in
the 2010 polls.
"Kirkuk
is Kurdish, and
a Kurdistani city
like Erbil, Sulaimaniyah
or Duhok, and is part of Kurdistan," Iraqi
Kurdistan region
president Massoud Barzani said on July 14. "All of
the historical and geographical documents prove
this."
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.
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 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 to six
months to end on June 30 2008.
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author or news agency,
aswataliraq info | ekurd net | Agencies
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