Kirkuk referendum on hold?

This is a powderkeg waiting to explode. Their will be trouble if the referendum is postponed and trouble if it goes ahead. Trouble from Kurds if it is postponed. Trouble from Turkey and minority groups in Kirkuk if it goes ahead.

Iraqi Kurds play down US envoy's Kirkuk comments
Iraqi Kurds played down a recent statement by the US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, that a referendum on the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk was unlikely to go ahead as planned, saying the remarks did not reflect the official position of the United States.

Qadir Aziz, a representative of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region's president Massoud Barzani, said the Kirkuk referendum must be held at the scheduled time, insisting that the Iraqi Kurdish leadership would not agree to any compromise on that issue. "We don't believe this is the official position of the US administration. Crocker has conveyed similar views to the Kurdish political leadership but he has been told that the referendum process must go ahead as planned," he was quoted as saying by PUKmedia, an Internet Web site affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
The referendum for the oil-rich northern city, provided for in the Iraqi constitution, was due by the end of the year but has become bogged down by sectarian differences. "There is a general realization out there that, as a practical matter, it is going to be very hard to stick to the original timetable," Crocker told Reuters in Baghdad on Thursday. "The timetable for the end of the year was set with an expectation that the preparations would move ahead in a way (that) they haven't," he said.

So far there has been no sign of a census -- due by the end of July -- or other important milestones like a "normalization" process mandated under Article 140 of Iraq's 2005 Constitution. Turkey, which has close ties with the city's Turkmen community, also seeks postponement of the referendum, which is widely expected to result in the inclusion of Kirkuk in the autonomous Kurdish region.

Kurdish leader threatens civil war over Kirkuk

If the US or the Iraqi govt. double crosses the Kurds then the Iraqi government could easily fall and perhaps civil war ensue as Barzani threatens. Most commentators are simply ignoring the situation for the moment.

Iraq: Kurdish leader threatens civil war over Kirkuk
By James Cogan
7 August 2007
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The president of the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), Massoud Barzani, last Tuesday threatened “a real civil war” in Iraq if a referendum to incorporate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk into Kurdish territory continues to be delayed by the other Iraqi political factions.

Clause 140 of the 2005 US-vetted Iraqi constitution states that a referendum in Kirkuk and other Kurdish “disputed territories” must take place by December 31, 2007 to determine whether the populace wants to join the KRG. The inclusion of the clause was one of the main pay-offs by the Bush administration for the assistance of the Kurdish parties. Since the 2003 invasion, they have been the most loyal allies of the US occupation. Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani have been crucial participants in all the puppet governments in Baghdad, generally endorsing every action by the White House and the US military.

Kurdish authorities and security forces in Kirkuk province have been working to ensure that the disputed territories have a clear majority of Kurdish voters before the referendum. Tens of thousands of Kurds who were driven out of Kirkuk in the 1980s by Saddam Hussein’s regime have been re-settled in the city. Thousands of Arabs have been evicted over the past four years. This reverse ethnic cleansing is called “normalisation” in the constitution. While some Arabs have taken financial assistance and left voluntarily, others allege that Kurdish militias have used actual or threatened violence. Turkish-speaking Turkomans, who have been a major presence in Kirkuk for centuries, also claim they are being terrorised into leaving.

Gaining control of Kirkuk would provide the economic foundations for the long-term perspective of Kurdish nationalists—a separate Kurdish state. The KRG currently consists of Iraq’s three northern majority Kurdish provinces of Sulaymaniyah, Irbil and Dahuk. The adjoining areas that would be added under Clause 140 include the Kurdish populated districts of Ninewa and Diyala provinces and much of Kirkuk province, which contain Iraq’s oldest oil fields and as much as 40 percent of the country’s total untapped oil reserves. The Kurdish region would be transformed into one of the world’s top 10 oil producers overnight.

Just four months before the referendum deadline, however, the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has done next to nothing to prepare for a vote. In particular, it failed to complete a census in the disputed territories by July 31, as had been previously agreed with the KRG.

The stalling reflects the extent of opposition. Arab and Turkoman leaders in Kirkuk have warned they will take up arms to stop a Kurdish-controlled referendum, the outcome of which is predetermined and would overnight convert members of their communities into second class citizens in a de-facto separate state. Sunni and Shiite Arab parties in Baghdad oppose losing lucrative oil revenues and have demanded that Clause 140 be repudiated. In Ankara, some Turkish politicians, who fear an energy-rich KRG would intensify separatist calls among Turkey’s 15 million-strong Kurdish minority, have called for an invasion of northern Iraq to stop a KRG annexation of Kirkuk.

The Bush administration publicly stands by the Iraqi constitution. Leading figures within the US political establishment, however, have expressed concerns over the Kurdish claims on Kirkuk. There are fears of sharp tensions with Turkey—a key NATO ally—as well as deepening instability in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group report prepared last year by Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton described Kirkuk as a “powder keg” and called for the referendum to be delayed indefinitely.

Barzani’s threat of civil war testifies to the frustration among the Kurdish elite over the possibility that their ambitions might be thwarted. He told the US-based Arabic television station Al-Hurra:

“There is procrastination and if this issue is not resolved, as I said before, all options are open. Frankly I am not comfortable with the behaviour and the policy of the federal [Iraqi] government on Kirkuk and Clause 140 ... The Kurds will never relinquish or bargain over Kirkuk, but we have accepted to regain Kirkuk through constitutional and legal methods. But if we despair of those constitutional and legal methods, then we will have the right to resort to other means. If Clause 140 is not implemented, then there will be a real civil war.”

Barzani’s rhetoric contains a significant degree of brinkmanship, aimed at pressuring the Iraqi government and the US into facilitating the referendum as soon as possible. Maliki is flying to Turkey today for talks with re-elected Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the KRG’s ambitions in Kirkuk as well as the presence in Iraq’s north of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels who have fought a 23-year civil war with the Turkish state.

As many as 200,000 Turkish troops are massed on the Iraqi border and the Turkish military is demanding parliamentary approval to cross over and destroy PKK hideouts. The top Turkish commander, General Yasar Buyukanit, stated on May 31 that the only question he needed to be answered was whether “something will happen with Barzani as well” if his forces invaded Iraq.

According to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, Kurdish politicians have “urged Maliki to tell the Turkish leader to stay out of Iraq’s affairs”. If Maliki does not, it could end his government. The main Sunni faction and the large Shiite faction loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have walked out of the cabinet. Baghdad is swirling with rumours of new coalitions being formed and an imminent vote to elect a new prime minister. If the Kurdish legislators in the Iraqi parliament switched to supporting another candidate, their votes could bring Maliki down.

Omer Taspinar, from the Brookings Institute, told the Post he believed the Kurds wanted to trade their agreement to crack down on the PKK “as a quid pro quo for Kirkuk”. In other words, if Turkey agrees to the city and its oil coming under Kurdish jurisdiction, the KRG would allow a Turkish military intervention or deploy its own forces to dislodge the PKK from the border region. Such a deal would also serve to mollify US fears of regional chaos.

If Kurdish political maneuvering fails, however, the KRG has a considerable military force to turn Barzani’s talk of civil war into reality. Kurds who were recruited out of the peshmerga militias of the KDP and PUK make up a large percentage of the new Iraqi army units operating in northern Iraq. One estimate is that the KRG could mobilise 175,000 fighters, equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery.

Arab and Turkoman organisations fear that deployments are already underway for the armed seizure of the city. Following suicide bombings in Kirkuk on July 16 that killed 85 people, there are unconfirmed reports that as many as 12,000 additional Kurdish troops have begun moving into areas surrounding the city, ostensibly to provide security. According to the Voices of Iraq news agency, some 6,000 peshmerga have been dispatched to “protect oil pipelines”, while another 6,000 are being sent to “protect power lines”.

Given the carnage in Iraq over the past four-and-a-half years, Barzani’s choice of the word “real” to describe the character of a civil war over Kirkuk cannot be passed over lightly.

The Kurdish leader’s remark suggests that he believes ethnic conflict in northern Iraq would result in even greater death, destruction and displacement than the sectarian violence raging in Iraq’s central provinces. Fighting between Shiite militias linked to Maliki’s pro-US government and Sunni Muslim extremists opposed to its existence has killed tens of thousands of people from both sects and forced well over one million to flee their homes. An exodus of Arabs, Turkoman and other minorities from Kurdish-populated areas—including Iraq’s third-largest city of Mosul which the KRG has only reluctantly not laid claim to yet—could produce well over two million refugees.

The Bush administration has sought to avoid a conflict in northern Iraq that would inevitably provoke a political crisis in Baghdad, destabilise the only relatively stable areas of the country and potentially draw in Iraq’s neighbours—Syria and Iran, as well as Turkey. Yet, just as the US invasion is responsible for fuelling sectarian Sunni-Shiite tensions, so it has unleashed communal forces in Iraq’s north over which Washington has no control.






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Kurdistan: The next battleground

Nary a mention of the PKK and Turkey's threat to enter northern Iraq if something is not done by Kurdistan or the US to neutralise the threat. The sure sign that neither Kurdistan and Iraq as a whole are not sovereign is that flights from and out of Irbil airport must be sanctioned through a US airbase in Qatar. Amazing?

Kurdistan: Iraq's Next Battleground?
By Andrew Lee Butters / Arbil

Like residents of Berlin during the airlift, inhabitants of Arbil--capital of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq--get a little flutter in their hearts when they see a plane coming in to land. Built after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Arbil's international airport is a symbol to Kurds that their years of isolation as an oppressed ethnic minority are over and that the Kurdish region, unlike the rest of Iraq, is open for business. Passengers flying into Baghdad have to endure a corkscrew landing to avoid possible surface-to-air missiles. But a trip to Arbil is so safe that on my flight I was the only passenger packing body armor. When I arrived, my biggest problem was the $50 fare charged for a 10-minute cab ride by the drivers of Hello Taxi--and finding a room at one of the city's packed hotels.

Such is life in Iraqi Kurdistan, the last beacon of stability amid the wreckage of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq. Of course, stability is a relative term. True, the airport is putting in a runway long enough to accommodate jumbo jets, but for now it will be used mainly for U.S. military flights. That's because only one Western carrier--Austrian Airlines--is brave enough to land there. Other flights are run by off-brand charters with names like Flying Carpet and Middle Eastern carriers like Iraqi Airways. And even those are unreliable. Many of the officials at Iraqi Airways are former Baathists who deliberately try to delay flights. Flights from Turkey often get canceled when there's a public dispute between Kurdish and Turkish politicians. And all flights in and out of Kurdish Iraq still have to receive clearance from both the civil-aviation authority in Baghdad and the American air base in Qatar.

Iraqi Kurds have been in control of their region since 1991, when, with the help of the U.S.-enforced no-fly zone, they drove Saddam's forces out of northern Iraq. But now, four years after the liberation of the rest of the country, Kurdish Iraq is undergoing an identity crisis. On the one hand, it is a rare success story in the Middle East: a stable territory run by a secular leadership committed to economic and political reform and sitting on a huge pool of oil. On the other hand, it is tiny and landlocked, uncomfortably attached to a war-ravaged nation and surrounded by unfriendly neighbors. Despite the region's outward signs of tranquillity, the fate of Kurdistan--whether it will continue as an inspiring example of what the rest of Iraq could look like or become engulfed by the country's violence--remains unresolved, dependent as much on what happens to the barely functioning Iraqi state as on the Kurds.

For the Bush Administration, the central question is how long the Kurds can be persuaded to remain part of a united Iraq. The overwhelming majority of Kurds would like to break free of Iraq and form an independent nation. So far, Kurdish leaders have been a constructive force in holding Iraq together, helping to write and adopt a national constitution that, although it gave great powers to the regions, has kept Iraq intact as a federal state. Kurds are serving at the highest levels of the Iraqi government, including as President, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

But it's doubtful that spirit of cooperation will last. The further that Iraq slides into civil war, the more the Kurds will want to insulate themselves from it, by carving out more political and economic autonomy. Even if they stop short of outright secession, the Kurds could still unleash new conflicts in Iraq if their impatience with the fecklessness of the Baghdad government prompts them to take action on their own. The most explosive flashpoint is Kirkuk, the disputed oil-rich city that the Kurds lay claim to. As Iraq's Kurdish President, Massoud Barzani, said on March 22 during the farewell visit of departing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, "Our patience is not unlimited." So what happens to Iraq when it runs out?

WHEN I FIRST TRAVELED TO THE KURDISH north in August 2004 to escape the heat and violence of Baghdad, the so-called Switzerland of Iraq was disappointing in one respect: summers on the high plains of Arbil are almost as scorching. Otherwise, Kurdistan was a refuge. In Baghdad, journalists had begun hiring security entourages and erecting guarded compounds. To the north in Arbil, as a visiting American, I was practically given the keys to the city. I did my reporting by foot or hailed taxis from the street, spent my evenings in beer gardens or pizza parlors, and slept on the roof of the house, with the sound of crickets rather than Kalashnikovs in the cooling night air.

Since then the differences between Kurdistan and Iraq proper have become even more dramatic. The plains around Arbil--once a glaring semidesert wasteland--are exploding with luxury housing developments. They have names like British Village, which resembles a gated California suburb, and Dream City, which supposedly will have its own conference center, supermarket and American-style school. The Turkish developers of Naz City, a high-rise condominium complex, are trying to sell house-proud Kurds on modern apartment living. An American company wants to build Iraq's first ski resort in the mountains near the Turkish and Iranian borders. While citizens in Baghdad struggle to survive, a sign in Arbil declares that the city is "striving for perfection."

The Kurds' most important achievement has been to keep their region free of Iraq's insurgency and sectarian warfare, thanks to their army of 70,000 peshmerga soldiers. Not a single American soldier has been killed in Kurdistan since the start of the war in Iraq, and there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in Arbil since June 2005.

Take a walk, however, in any of this city's safe and prosperous neighborhoods, and you will quickly see that the other Iraq isn't so far away. Some 150,000 displaced Iraqi Arabs have taken refuge in Kurdistan from the conflict in the central and southern parts of the country. Kurdish officials require Iraqi Arabs trying to enter Kurdistan to have a Kurdish resident vouch for their character. As a result, the Arab refugee population is largely middle class, with a preponderance of doctors, lawyers and other professionals.

But as the number of newcomers swells, tensions are rising. Not many Kurds have forgotten the years of repression by Iraq's Arab majority, and many now blame Arabs for rising home prices. While I was waiting to speak to the president of Salahaddin University in Arbil, which has added some 200 Arab professors to its faculty, a visiting Kurdish archaeologist offered his expert opinion on the subject. "From Muhammad until now, Arabs are rotten to the bone," he said, "even when they are being friendly to you." Non-Kurdish Iraqis, for their part, resent being treated as second-class citizens in Kurdish Iraq. "Why do I need permission to live in my own country?" said Walaa Matti, an Assyrian Christian who fled his home in Mosul and works in the business center of a hotel in Arbil. "I'm Iraqi, and this is my country, but I feel like a stranger."

The Kurds' tenuous relationship with Arab Iraq is even more combustible some 47 miles south, in Kirkuk. The city is less than a two-hour drive from Arbil, but the road trip into the other Iraq is a spooky one. To the left, there's a chain of forts left over from the Iran-Iraq war, crumbling masonry monsters that look as if they were built to World War I specifications. The Hamreen Mountains to the right are practically deserted save for a series of sentry posts silhouetted along the ridge line. And waiting straight ahead at the gates of Kirkuk is a natural-gas flare, an eternal flame that the locals call Babagurgur, which is the symbol of this oil-rich city.

Kirkuk, with its mixed population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans, has long had the potential to be a sectarian powder keg. Under Saddam's Baathist regime, the Iraqi government forced out a large number of the city's majority Kurdish population and resettled the city with Arabs from the south. Now ethnic tensions are erupting as Kurds demand the return of Kirkuk to their control. The day I visited in March, a series of two car bombs and three roadside bombs killed 18 people. On April 1, at least 15 people, including eight schoolchildren, died in a suicide truck bombing.

The violence in this city of about 1 million people hasn't reached a level comparable to that in Baghdad. Infrastructure and services in the city are functional by Iraqi standards despite the central government, which delays projects by sheer inertia, say U.S. and Kurdish officials. Such neglect may soon reach a crisis point in Kirkuk. The Iraqi constitution calls for the city to hold a referendum by year's end on whether it should remain under the control of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad or become part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

A growing number of voices outside Iraq--including the Baker-Hamilton commission--have called for the contentious issue to be shelved. But Kurdish leaders say further delay only increases the chance that the political process for settling the Kirkuk issue will turn into an ethnic struggle. Kirkuk is a major staging ground for Arab insurgents trying to infiltrate Kurdistan, and Kurds say they could do a better job than the Iraqi government of maintaining security there. "If we had control of Kirkuk, we could clean it out in two months," said Abdullah Ali Muhammad, head of Kurdish security forces in Arbil. Other Kurdish officials warn that if the referendum is delayed, Kurds forced out of Kirkuk by the old regime's ethnic-cleansing program would try to return on their own. If that happens and if the Iraqi government hasn't moved out the "new" Arabs transplanted there under Saddam, "there will be civil war," according to Kamal Kirkuki, vice president of the Kurdistan Parliament and head of a committee overseeing territorial disputes. Delay would give insurgents that much longer to set off car bombs and push the city closer to Baghdad-style sectarian revenge killings.

And that's just the beginning. U.S. officials and Kurdish leaders know that unilateral moves by Kurds--to take Kirkuk on their own or drop out of the Iraqi government--would not only provoke the ire of Iraq's Arab majority but also risk intervention by Iraq's neighbors, such as Turkey, Iran and Syria, which all have restive Kurdish minorities of their own. Turkey, for instance, would likely shut the borders with Kurdistan and stop all flights coming in from over its airspace. Of all the problems that would follow, the most ironic could be that a newly independent oil-rich Kurdistan, without any refineries or pipelines, would run out of gas. Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the Kurdish government's office of foreign relations, told me that declaring independence would be "political suicide."

But even that worst-case scenario might not be enough to dissuade the popular clamor inside Kurdistan for more assertive action. Just four years since the fall of Saddam, most Kurds may be willing to remain a part of Iraq for now, but few want their destinies to remain tied to a poor, failing state beset by sectarian carnage. Over time, the push for a free and independent Kurdistan may become irresistible. In a bid to manage expectations, the Kurdish leadership is putting out a new party line, echoed in mosques and newspaper editorials: "Be grateful." But as Americans have learned in Iraq, gratitude is a wasting asset.

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Conflict between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan

This conflict threatens to break out into violence from time to time and the US unwillingness to tackle rebels in northern Iraq is causing friction between the US and Turkey.

PM Erdogan grows furious, castigates Barzani


The New Anatolian with AP / Ankara

10 April 2007


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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday retaliated to blunt remarks of an Iraqi Kurdish leader warning Iraqi Kurds against interfering in Turkey's southeast.

"The price for them will be very high," said Erdogan challenging the words by Iraqi Kurdish regional administration leader Massoud Barzani, who said Iraqi Kurds would retaliate to any Turkish interference in northern Iraq by stirring up trouble in Turkey's southeast.

"He's out of place. He'll be crushed under his words," Erdogan said. "Northern Iraq, which is a neighbor, is making a serious mistake: the price for them will be very high," he warned.

The verbal sparring was set off by Barzani over the weekend when he said in an interview with al-Arabiyah television that Iraqi Kurds could "interfere" in Kurdish-majority Turkish cities if Ankara interfered in northern Iraq.

A pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) official, party's Diyarbakir office head Hilmi Aydogdu, was arrested due to remarks resembling that of Barzani. He was then released by court.

Barzani previously told in another interview that the Kurds in Turkey should draw their own path. The change in his remarks comes amid raising tension due to looming presidential and general elections which has almost turned into a hidden fight between the allegedly political Islamist government and the secular sections of the society.

Barzani's remark also touched an extremely sensitive nerve in Turkey, where more than 37,000 people have been killed in fighting between Turkish security forces and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since 1984, most of them in the southeastern region bordering Iraq.

Over the weekend, nine security officers were dead either in clashes or due to from landmines in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country, despite an ongoing unilateral ceasefire announced by the PKK. Turkey refused the ceasefire but the DTP, claimed to be a mouthpiece of Abdullah Ocalan, inmate leader of the terror group, has been using the PKK's decision as a tool against the government to lay ground for further political representation of Kurdish masses in Turkey.

Turkey fears that any moves toward greater independence for Kurds in northern Iraq could incite Turkey's own estimated 14 million Kurds to outright rebellion.

The political rhetoric adopted by Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party focusing on promoting all embracing citizenship notion over ethnic emphasis is seen a tool to pass through this time of ambiguity regarding the stability near its eastern border.

Turkey is also especially concerned about Barzani's bid to incorporate the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk into his semiautonomous region, fearing that Iraqi Kurds will use the city's oil revenues to fund a bid for independence.

Last week, the Iraqi government decided to implement a constitutional requirement to determine the status of Kirkuk - which is disputed among several different ethnic groups - by the end of the year. The plan is expected to turn Kirkuk and its vast oil reserves over to Kurdish control, a step rejected by many of Iraq's Arabs and its Turkmen - ethnic Turks who are strongly backed by Ankara.

Some in Turkey have hinted at military action to prevent the Kurds from gaining control of Kirkuk. Particularly, cross-border operation was seriously discussed during the second half of last year in political back corridors and Parliament gathered for a close vote in order to authorize the AK Party government for that purpose.

Barzani's remarks made front page news and drew rage in Turkey, with opposition parties criticizing the government for not responding harshly to the Kurdish leader's threat.

"We're a state whose history traces back to centuries. Our history as a state includes not only northern Iraq but also Baghdad," Erdogan challenged.

Also the foreign minister of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, expressed his uneasiness about the remarks but only said, "All will see our response."

At a press conference in Parliament, AK Party's deputy group leader Irfan Gunduz branded the remarks provocative saying he, speaking on behalf of his party, condemns Barzani's statement which came in a time when Turkey feels great sorrow due to fallen soldiers.

He also warned Iraqi Kurds saying Barzani should be capable of calculating what such remarks would cost him, both during the U.S. forces are there and after the left Iraq, and cited the consequences of irresponsible moves of Saddam Hussein.

He called Barzani's words an erroneous response to the helping hand of Turkey and added that Turkey is powerful enough to silence all threats to its security and future. "No one should try Turkey's patience," he added.

Opposition rebukes govt over remarks

The remarks also surfaced fierce reaction among the political arena in Turkey with several party leaders condemned Barzani and called on the government to employ a harder line against the regional Kurdish administration.

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy group leader Haluk Koc accused Barzani of behaving arrogantly and blamed the U.S. for its support to the regional administration.

"We have to see who encourages Barzani. Who give landmines to the PKK? Are they product of the U.S.? I have to ask the prime minister, who is on a show in the Black Sea while we're grieving here [due to fallen soldiers], the foreign minister, who welcome all questions with a smile, and the interior minister, why do you remain silent? Is not 10 deaths enough to talk?" Koc concluded.

Social Democrat People's Party (SHP) leader Murat Karayalcin, in a written statement, said that the response of the people, beginning with Kurdish origin Turkish citizens, should be appropriately sharp.

True Path Party (DYP) leader Mehmet Agar also criticized the government for what he branded inaptitude and apathy in particular regarding the remarks of Barzani and in general foreign policy issues.

"His boldness is result of lack of determination of Turkey's government," said Agar referring to Barzani but added that no one should try Turkey's force. Turkey has the biggest armed forces in the region, he added.

Gul asks US to warn Barzani

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul telephoned U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday saying that he was very disturbed by Barzani's comments, reports said on Monday.

Gul reportedly asked Rice to ensure that Barzani does not again make such statements, which he described as being a threat to the territorial integrity of Turkey.

Turkey's Special Iraq Envoy Oguz Celikkol has also gone to the U.S. over the weekend to express Turkey's uneasiness regarding the recent developments.

Celikkol is also expected to raise worries about recent remarks by Retired Chief of Joint Staff of the U.S. Army General Richard Myers who stated stated on Saturday that fight against terrorist PKK is not a priority for the U.S. since essential struggle in Iraq is against the extremist groups that are violating Baghdad and other regions of Iraq.

State Minister Kursad Tuzmen, responding to a suggestion by Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) leader Erkan Mumcu to close Habur border gate for three days as a sanction, said that Turkey will do what it has to do in good time.

Iraq endorses plan to remove Arabs from Kirkuk

This is bound to create more ethnic conflict and complaints from Turkey. This is an area that could see a great deal of violence break out.



Iraq endorses contentious plan to relocate Arabs from oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk





By Steven R. Hurst
ASSOCIATED PRESS

12:45 p.m. March 31, 2007

BAGHDAD – Iraq's government has endorsed plans to relocate thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein's campaign to force ethnic Kurds out of the oil-rich city, in an effort to undo one of the former dictator's most enduring and hated policies.
The contentious decision was confirmed Saturday by Iraq's Sunni justice minister as he told The Associated Press he was resigning. Almost immediately, opposition politicians said they feared it would harden the violent divisions among Iraq's fractious ethnic and religious groups and possibly lead to an Iraq divided among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites.



AdvertisementThe plan was virtually certain to anger neighboring Turkey, which fears a northward migration of Iraqi Kurds – and an exodus of Sunni Arabs – will inflame its own restive Kurdish minority.
At least 36 people were killed in a series of bombings and attacks around the country, including nine construction workers who died when gunmen opened fire on their bus south of Kirkuk. The deaths capped a week in which more than 500 people were killed in sectarian violence.

Kirkuk, an ancient city that once was part of the Ottoman Empire, has a large minority of ethnic Turks as well as Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. The city is just south of the Kurdish autonomous zone stretching across three provinces of northeastern Iraq.

Iraq's constitution sets an end-of-the-year deadline for a referendum on Kirkuk's status. Since Saddam's fall four years ago, thousands of Kurds who once lived in the city have resettled there. It is now believed Kurds are a majority of the population and that a referendum on attaching Kirkuk to the Kurdish autonomous zone would pass easily.

Justice Minister Hashim al-Shebli said the Cabinet agreed on Thursday to a study group's recommendation that Arabs who had moved to Kirkuk from other parts of Iraq after July 1968 should be returned to their original towns and paid compensation.

Al-Shebli, who had overseen the committee on Kirkuk's status, said relocation would be voluntary. Those who choose to leave will be paid about $15,000 and given land in their former hometowns.

“There will be no coercion and the decision will not be implemented by force,” al-Shebli told The Associated Press.

Tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled Kirkuk in the 1980s and 1990s when Saddam's government implemented its “Arabization” policy. Kurds and non-Arabs were replaced with pro-government Arabs from the mainly Shiite impoverished south.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Kurds and other non-Arabs streamed back, only to find their homes were either sold or given to Arabs. Some of the returning Kurds found nowhere to live except in parks and abandoned government buildings. Others drove Arabs from the city, despite pleas from Sunni and Shiite leaders for them to stay.

Adil Abdul-Hussein Alami, a 62-year-old Shiite who moved to Kirkuk 23 years ago in return for $1,000 and a free piece of land, said he would find it hard to leave.

“Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and I'm Iraqi,” said the father of nine. “We came here as one family and now we are four. Our blood is mixed with Kurds and Turkmen.”

But Ahmed Salih Zowbaa, a 52-year-old Shiite father of six who moved to the city from Kufa in 1987, agreed with the government's decision. “We gave our votes to this government and constitution and as long as the government will compensate us, then there is no injustice at all,” he said.

There were fears that a referendum that was likely to put Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, under Kurdish control could open a new front in the violence that has ravaged Iraq since shortly after the U.S.-led invasion. On March 19, several bombs struck targets in Kirkuk and killed at least 26 people.

Al-Shebli, a Sunni Arab, also confirmed he had offered his resignation on the same day that the Cabinet approved the plan. He cited differences with the government and his own political group, the secular Iraqi List, which joined Sunni Arab lawmakers Saturday in opposing the Kirkuk decision.

He said he would continue in office until the Cabinet approved his resignation.

The Iraqi List is led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. The group holds 25 seats in the 275-seat parliament.

Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said al-Shebli quit before he could be fired in a coming government reshuffle. Neither al-Dabbagh nor al-Shebli would say if the minister had resigned over the Kirkuk issue.

In late February, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Iraq should delay the Kirkuk referendum because the city was not secure.

Turkey fears Iraq's Kurds want Kirkuk's oil revenues to fund an eventual bid for independence that could encourage separatist Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey, who have been fighting for autonomy since 1984. That conflict has claimed the lives of 37,000 people.

Al-Shebli said local authorities in Kirkuk would begin distributing forms soon to Arab families to determine who would participate in the relocation program. He said he could not predict how long the process would take.

Planning Minister Ali Baban said the relocation plan was adopted over the opposition of Sunni Arab members of the Shiite-led government, members of the Iraqi List and at least one Cabinet minister loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

“We demanded that the question of Kirkuk be resolved through dialogue between the political blocs and not through the committee,” he told the AP earlier this week. “They say the repatriation is voluntary, but we have our doubts.”

Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni lawmaker with the Iraqi List, also denounced the decision, saying it fails to address key issues, including how to deal with property claims.

“There are more than 13,000 unsolved cases before the commission in charge of this point and it just solved no more than 250 of them,” he said of the property claims. “The other thing is the huge demographic change in Kirkuk as more than 650,000 Kurds have been brought in illegally over the past four years. We contest these resolutions and we will raise to the parliament to be discussed.”