MPs collecting signatures to question Talabani

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Several members of parliament already embarked on a signature-collecting campaign to question Iraqi President Jalal Talabani over his recent statements in which he termed Kirkuk as “the Jerusalem of Kurdistan,” a legislator from al-Iraqiya bloc said on Saturday. “Talabani’s remarks considering the Arabs as occupiers of Kirkuk and that the city is the Jerusalem of Kurdistan are totally rejected. He wanted to contain the Kurdish street’s anger but on the other hand he angered all the Iraqi people,” Wihda al-Djemeili told IraqiNews.com news agency. “A number of lawmakers are collecting signatures to question the Iraqi president and hear his justifications over his irresponsible statements,” she said. Talabani, speaking in the northern Iraq Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya last week on the occasion marking the 10th  anniversary of the 1991 uprising against the former regime of Saddam Hussein, termed Kirkuk as “Kurdistan’s Jerusalem,” calling on the Kurds in the province to form a “strategic Kurdish-Turkmen alliance to liberate it from terrorists and neo-occupiers.” “The thing that unites the Kurdish people the most is the talk about Kirkuk and that is why Jalal Talabani played that chord,” Djemeili noted. Last week, she had commented on Talabani’s statements and described them as “serious.” “The oil-rich province of Kirkuk is the Kurds’ promised land and old dream. Perhaps President Talabani’s statements were an attempt to ease the anger of the people in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, which has been witnessing mass demonstrations,” Djemeili had told IraqiNews.com. Djemeili noted that Talabani does not represent a certain group or party but he is the president of the republic of Iraq. “The Kurds’ inclination to get Kirkuk and annex it to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region is immense. They can do that because they have a strategic vision,” she said. She pointed out that the Turkmen powers “would not be able to face up to the Kurds on the grounds that the Turkmen do not have the funds, security forces or human resources owned by the Kurds.” The oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab population, 250 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, is one of the most disputed areas by the Kurdistan regional government and the Iraqi government in Baghdad. The Kurds are seeking to integrate the province into the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region claiming it to be a historically Kurdish city. 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. AmR (TI) 1268