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Kurdistan regional government urges
presidential council to reject provincial election law
23.7.2008
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July
23, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region "Iraq", —
Iraq's Kurdistan regional government (KRG) on
Wednesday denounced a draft law paving the way for
U.S.-backed provincial elections and asked the
presidential council to veto it.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and his two
deputies need to ratify the law before it can take
effect. A decision to send it back to parliament
would likely delay the elections, which had been due
by Oct. 1. The polls are seen by U.S. officials as
another key step toward repairing Iraq's sectarian
rifts.
Parliament
approved the law
on Tuesday despite a Kurdish walkout to protest a
secret ballot held on a section dealing with the
disputed oil-rich Kirkuk region.
Iraq's electoral commission has said the provincial
balloting already needs to be delayed until Dec. 22
because it was too late to make all the necessary
preparations.
An official in the commission said the vote would be
held in December if the law is approved by the end
of this month.
"But if the law is not approved in the coming week,www.ekurd.net
then the date will be
changed to sometime in 2009," the official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity because of
security concerns.
Deputy parliament speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, a
Shiite, and other critics predicted that a vote is
unlikely before next year.
Kurdish legislators, along with the two deputy
parliament speakers, walked out after lawmakers
decided to hold a secret ballot on an article that
included a requirement for ethnic power-sharing in
Kirkuk.
Kurdish opposition to the equal distribution of
provincial council seats among Kurds,www.ekurd.net
Turkomen and Arabs in
the Kirkuk region — outside Kurdish territory but
considered by many Kurds to be part of their
historical land — has been a major factor in
stalling the law's approval.
The article also transfers security responsibilities
in Kirkuk to military units brought from central and
southern Iraq instead of those already there, an
apparent move against Kurdish forces heavily
deployed in the area.
The Kurdish Regional Government, which oversees the
three provinces making up its semiautonomous
territory, focused its criticism on the decision by
parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni
Arab, to hold the secret ballot in a bid to break a
deadlock over the issue.
The Kurds called the decision a "constitutional
breach" and a violation of parliamentary rules.
"We declare that the Kurdistan region is not bound
by the results of this unconstitutional process,"
the KRG said in a statement. "We demand that the
parliament, the president and the presidential
council oppose these suspicious projects that serve
non-Iraqi agendas."
"We appeal to all ... sons of the Kurdistan region
to stand in one line to foil this serious
conspiracy," it added, in a plea apparently directed
at Talabani.
The elections are expected to redistribute power in
Iraq's 18 provinces in what is considered a
necessary step toward reconciliation. Many Sunni
Arabs boycotted provincial balloting in January
2005, enabling Shiite Muslims and Kurds to win a
disproportionate share of power.
A preliminary election law setting the October
deadline had been touted as a sign that Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government was making
political progress, in addition to security gains.
But the Iraqis then deadlocked over a follow-up law
establishing guidelines and funding for the vote.
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, 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."
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas.
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 in July 2008.
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.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AP |
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