Barazani presides over Kirkuk meeting

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: President of Iraq’s Kurdistan region Massoud Barazani has presided over a meeting to discuss the contentious issue of Kirkuk and Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. “The meeting was attended by Vice President of the Kurdistan region Kosrat Rasul Ali, Deputy Speaker of the Kurdistan Parliament, Kamal Kikruki, the head of Kirkuk’s provincial council, Kirkuk governor, and officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP),” according to a statement published on the official web site of the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). 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) 1