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Iraqi Arabs, Turkmen reject Kurdistan
regional constitution
28.6.2009
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June
28, 2009
ERBIL-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — Arab
and Turkmen politicians on Friday rejected the newly
established constitution of Iraq's Kurdistan region,
calling against the decision to
add Kirkuk and
other Iraqi districts to the Kurdish region. Iraq's
autonomous region of Kurdistan on Wednesday
passed a new
constitution in which it laid claim to the disputed
oil-rich province of Kirkuk
Some 96 out of 97 Kurdish MPs voted for the new
regional constitution which contains an article that
calls to merge Kirkuk, known for rich oil reserves,
into the region's jurisdiction.
Head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front and MP Saadiddine
Arkej during a press conference, said that the
Kurdistan region's constitution conflicts with that
of the Central Federal Government.
He urged the Central Government to protect areas
densely populated by Turkmen or allow the ethnic
group to defend itself against the threat of terror
attacks aimed at its ethnic cleansing.
The Front's Secretary General Ahmed Al-Obaidi
indicated that districts like Kirkuk,www.ekurd.net
Mosul and Diyali are
under the Central Government's authority according
to the Iraqi constitution.
This makes it impossible for the districts to be
under Kurdish administration, he strongly
emphasised.
A number of Iraqi MPs of Arab ethnic origin in
statements, also regarded the decision as "Kurdish
greed over the rights of the Iraqi people and their
land."
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.
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.
Turkoman and Arab calls to
delay census in Kirkuk not illegal
Member of the legal committee in the Iraqi
Parliament criticized the calls by some Arab and
Turkmen politicians in Kirkuk to postpone the
general population census in the province because
the destiny of the city has not been decided yet.
Mohsen Sa’adoun on the Kurdistan Alliance list told
AKnews that the general population census covers all
the Iraqi provinces,www.ekurd.net
and that it will not be
affected by any political consideration, noting that
“excluding Kirkuk from the census is wrong"
The calls by some figures in Kirkuk to put off the
census, due to their belief that Kirkuk has been
changed demographically since 2003, are “illegal and
illogical" Al-Sa’adun said.
The Arab and Turkoman politicians in the province do
not admit the censuses of 1957 and 1977 on the
pretext of the demographical change in the
province".
Sa’adun also called all on the political parties in
the province to cooperate with government to
complete the census in Kirkuk.
A number of Arab and Turkmen figures in Kirkuk
province called to postpone the census in the
province debating that the destiny of the province
has not been decided yet, while some Kurdish
observers believe that Turkoman calls for delaying
the census id to hide their real size in the
province.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
kuna net.kw | aknews com | Agencies
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