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Kirkuk question goes unanswered - province
refuses to join "Salahaddin Region"
19.11.2011 |
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November 19, 2011
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— Kirkuk will not be annexed to the "Salahaddin
region". This declaration came after the Salahaddin
Provincial Council proposed incorporating the
troubled province.
The Sunni-dominated Salahaddin province (170 km
north of Baghdad)
proclaimed
itself an autonomous region in response to the
arrests of staff members of Tikrit's university and
of a number of citizens.
This is the latest in long line of claims and
counter claims for jurisdiction of oil-rich,
multi-ethnic and insecure Kirkuk.
There are three scenarios to resolve the Kirkuk
question. The first is supported by Erbil and
demands annexing the province to Kurdistan Region.
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Kirkuk: A vendor sells socks at a market in central
Kirkuk, November 5, 2011. 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.Photo:
Reuters |
The second is Baghdad's favourite and suggests
granting broad powers to the province but keeping it
under central control. The third satisfies the
Turkmen and proposes turning the province to a
region of its own.
A Turkmen member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council
Tahsin Kahiyya told AKnews that the proposal is
useless and will not be accepted by the Turkmen,
Kurds and Arabs.
Turkmen support the formation of a "Kirkuk Region"
that will organize the relationship between its main
components according to the principle of national
consensus in its administration.
The Turkmen propose the establishment of a "Council
of Representatives" for Kirkuk that includes with
100 members, 32 seats each for the Turkmen, Kurds
and Arabs, and four seats for the Caldo-Assyrians.
The Turkmen project says a Council of Ministers of
the "Kirkuk Region" will be the executive and senior
managing committee in the region and perform the
functions of the executive branch under the
supervision of "the governing body". The Prime
Minister would be Kurdish with a Turkmen and Arab
deputy.
The member of the Arab Political Council Abdul
Rahman Munshid Assi said: "We are against the idea
of forming regions, so how will we allow the
annexation of Kirkuk to another region. The idea of
regions is a project brought by the American
occupation to divide the country."
Member of Kirkuk Provincial Council Mohammed Kamal
said earlier that "Kirkuk is one of the provinces
that were taken from Kurdistan and must be resolved
through Article 140 of the constitution."
"Kirkuk and other withheld areas have special status
and such a demand cannot be implemented. The stages
of the implementation of Article 140 is
normalization of property and population, compiling
a census and a referendum about the fate of the
province. We can decide then to become a region or
join another."
Article 140 states on that the problem of Kirkuk
should be resolved with a plebiscite, but Kurdish
officials say the first step towards this referendum
is being stalled by Baghdad.
The UN mission in Iraq demanded - in a report
published two years ago about the disputed areas -
keeping Kirkuk united, despite the tensions.
Kurds are calling for some of the U.S. forces to
remain in Kirkuk in anticipation of violence after
the planned withdrawal at the end of this year.
The representative of Iraqiya list from Kirkuk
province Mazen Abdul Jabbar told AKnews that the
problem is not about making Kirkuk a special region
or joining it to Kurdistan Region. He said it is
about staying within the central,www.ekurd.net
federal government and a solution should be found by
all parties instead of imposing the solution of one
party on the other.
The oil-rich province of Kirkuk is one of the most disputed areas by the
regional government and the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
The Kurds are seeking to integrate the province into the semi-autonomous
Kurdistan Region clamming it to be historically a Kurdish city, 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." 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 © 2011, respective
author or news agency,
aknews.com | ekurd.net | Agencies
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