UN plan to bring harmony among Kirkuk constituents

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A Kirkuk provincial council member said that the United Nations is promoting harmony among the various constituents of Kirkuk province. “We have not received UN proposals about Kirkuk thus far…We are waiting for them and we will give our opinion on them at the right time,” Tahseen Kahiya said in a TV interview. A UN plan has laid down two options for the situation in Kirkuk. The first option makes Kirkuk a “special status” province where both the Baghdad-based central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG) in Arbil could have power. Final decisions would be left to provincial officials. The special status would likely last between three and 10 years, giving officials more time to figure out Kirkuk’s final status. The second option makes Kirkuk politically autonomous but still somewhat reliant on Baghdad for funding. This plan would allow Kirkuk to collect revenue from the state-owned North Oil Corp. refineries in the province. 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. Kirkuk, an oil-rich and mixed city of Kurds, Turkmen, Christians and Arabs, lies 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. SS (S) 1