Kirkuk is Iraqi province – VP

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on Saturday said that Kirkuk is an Iraqi province and all Iraqi citizens are entitled to enjoy its wealth, rejecting a UN intervention to offer a study on the oil-rich city. “What has been achieved during the past months and para 23 of the law on provincial council elections have been steps in the right direction towards a fair and proper power sharing,” Hashemi was quoted in a statement by his office on Saturday as received by IraqiNews.com news agency. Para 23 of the law on local elections provides for forming a fact-finding commission in Kirkuk – from all components in the city – and to have the local elections postponed in the city until the panel finalizes its work. “I have told Ambassador (Staffan) De Mistura that I would not agree the UN should intervene on this issue or even offer any analytical studies particularly in these tense circumstances,” said Hashemi. De Mistura, the UN secretary general’s envoy to Iraq, had offered to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Presidential Board (PB) and the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region Massoud Barazani on April 22 an in-depth research on the internal disputed borders in Kirkuk and northern Iraq. Separate reports were prepared on the districts of Sinjar, Talafar, Talkeef, Shaykhan, Aqra, al-Hamdaniya, Makhmour, al-Huweija, al-Debis, Daqquq, Kirkuk, al-Touz, Kifri, Khanaqin and the Baladruz district city of Mandili. “I believe a UN report would stoke further tumults in an already troubled political arena. That is why I personally asked the UN envoy, De Mistura, to wait until security and stability are achieved in Iraq,” Hashemi noted. Article 140 provides for normalization of Kirkuk through having back its Kurdish and Turcoman 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. These stages were supposed to end on December 31, 2007, a deadline that was later extended to six months. 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. The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein 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. The Iraqi vice president also said that there are administrative differences among the provinces but this should not be called “disputed areas”. “It just sounds like as if we’re speaking about differences or territories between states, not as provinces in one single map and one single country,” Hashemi pointed out. AmR (I)/SR 1