Kirkuk governor urges UN to accelerate mission

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Kirkuk’s governor on Wednesday called on a U.N. delegation to the province to speed up its mission to prevent any problems that may occur as a result of possible delay in provincial elections in Kirkuk. “This is the first UN delegation to visit the province to discuss the implementation of Article 23 of the provincial council elections law,” Governor Abdelrahman Mostafa told IraqiNews.com news agency. The head of the delegation called on the provincial administration to cooperate with the delegates in their mission. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city and other disputed areas. Kurds seek to include the city in the autonomous Iraq’s Kurdistan region, while Sunni Muslims, Turkmen and Shiites oppose the incorporation. The article currently stipulates that all Arabs in Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in southern and central Iraqi areas, and formerly displaced residents returned to Kirkuk, 250 km northeast of Baghdad. 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. These stages were supposed to end on December 31, 2007, a deadline that was later extended to six months to end on June 30 2008. SS (S)/SR 1