Kurdistan RegionG: PM should create, not undermine, national unity

ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: The Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG) on Monday said that the duty of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to create national unity and promote tolerance, adding that the establishment of support councils will bring instability and divisions in Kurdish society. The statement was made in response to statements made by Maliki during a Baghdad-based press conference on November 20 in which he allegedly criticized the regional government’s stance on many issues. “The Office of the Prime Minister has also contacted collaborators who actively participated in the Anfal, a campaign that the international community has determined to be genocide. These persons, who have been on the run since 1991, were not included in the general amnesty,” read a statement published on the official web site of the regional government. The statement added that reaching out to former leaders of armed groups in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and other areas included in Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution in order to establish support councils may cause instability and undermine harmony in the region. “Attempts to send in the Iraqi Army and the creation of so-called ‘Support Councils’ in these disputed areas are clearly intended to impede and abort the implementation of Article-140. The incident at Khanaqin was never about the deployment of the Iraqi army for security purposes. The area was already secure. It was, indeed, an attempt to change the facts on the ground, an attempt to bypass the Constitution,” according to the statement. SS (S) 1