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Jalal Talabani's Party: Kirkuk is Kurdish, and not subject to
bargaining |
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Jalal Talabani's Party: Kirkuk is Kurdish,
and not subject to bargaining
8.9.2011 |
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September 8, 2011
SULAIMANIYAH,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani's political party, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan PUK, announced on Monday that the Province
of Kirkuk is Kurdish and that there can be no
bargaining over it.
The party claims that an agreement with Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law regarding
the future of the province was not fulfilled.
Under Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, a
referendum should have taken place no later than
December 2007 to determine the future of the
province. Political obstacles have so far prevented
the referendum from taking place.
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,www.ekurd.netit lies just
south border of the Kurdistan region, the population is a mix of
majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km
northeast of Baghdad.
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Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional
attachment to Kirkuk,www.ekurd.net
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.
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