KA reiterates rejection to grant 2 seats for Arabs, Turkmen

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Kurdistan Alliance (KA) bloc, the second largest in the Iraqi parliament, rejected that two seats would be given to Arabs and Turkmen otherwise this would “run counter to the Iraqi constitution”. “The legal committee must find a formula by virtue of which compensatory seats would be granted to Arabs and Turkmen,” the KA member Ahmed Anwar told IraqiNews.com news agency. He said that the parliament session on Saturday (Nov. 7) will be held at 1:00 p.m. Baghdad local time but before it a meeting of the Presidency Board (PB) will be convened with legal committee and the parties concerned with the issue of Kirkuk. Anwar noted that Thursday’s meeting has seen all the parties agreeing to four paragraphs but the KA refused the fifth one about granting seats for Arabs and Turkmen. The Iraqi parliament will hold a decisive session on Saturday to vote over the parliamentary election law, delayed over differences among legislators on the status of the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Today’s session will be convened after an agreement was reached on Thursday on a new proposal that was the outcome of several ones by the UN, the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front (IAF), the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) and Arab and Turkmen representatives of Kirkuk. The proposal envisages that parliamentary elections would be held in Kirkuk as scheduled on condition that a panel would be set up in one year to verify the voters’ registers and the holding of re-elections if excesses proved to have gone beyond 15%, in addition to granting Arab and Turkmen two compensatory seats. The problem of Kirkuk represents a stumbling stone before the adoption of the parliamentary election law, scheduled to be held on January 16, 2010, after political blocs were up to their ears in tough wrangling that did not help reach an agreement on the way elections should be held in the disputed province. Kirkuk, a city of mixed Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen population, lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad. AmR (S) 1