Kurds rule out referendum delay for disputed Kirkuk

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurdish leaders are determined to press ahead with a referendum on the future of the oil city of Kirkuk, despite rising tensions over the issue and violence that included car bomb attacks killing more than 80 people this week.

"We must hold the referendum by the end of the year," said Mohammed Ihsan, the Kurdish regional government's point man on Kirkuk. "Postponing it would mean surrender to the terrorists. We are not willing to do that."

Ihsan, whose title is Minister of Extra Regional Affairs in the Kurdish Regional Government, was speaking in an interview a day after a huge truck bomb exploded outside the local headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"There can be no question of a delay or negotiations on this," Ihsan said. "You don't negotiate the constitution."

Foreign analysts have warned Kirkuk could become the next flashpoint in the strife that has been tearing most of Iraq apart since the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

"If the referendum is held later this year over the objections of the other (non-Kurdish) communities, the civil war is very likely to spread to Kirkuk and the Kurdish region, until now Iraq's only area of quiet and progress," said an analysis of the issue by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

The Kurds see Kirkuk as their historical capital and want it included in their autonomous Kurdistan region.

But the referendum plan has run into bitter opposition from Kirkuk's other ethnic groups, including Turkmen and Chaldo-Assyrians, who fear they would be forced out of the city or become second-class citizens.

The Iraqi constitution's article 140 stipulates a December 31, 2007 deadline for the Kirkuk referendum -- at the end of a process that includes "normalization," shorthand for reversing the effects of Saddam's policy to drive Kurds out of a string of northern cities and replace them with Arabs.

The constitutional timetable also provided for a census to be completed by the end of July, but neither this nor "normalization" has been implemented.

"We are working on preparations for a voting list based on the 1957 census," Ihsan said. At that time, he added, Kurds made up 48.3 percent of the Kirkuk area's population and Arabs accounted for 28.2 percent.

The Kurds say the 1957 census was the last reliable count of Kirkuk's population before the Iraqi monarchy was toppled and a succession of governments began manipulating the demographics of the region in favor of Iraqi Arabs. By 1965, according to Ihsan, Kurds accounted for just 36.1 percent of the population.

Now, Kurds make up the largest community in the multiethnic city and would likely win the referendum on its final status, which requires a simple majority.

VOLATILE BREW

An added ingredient in the volatile Kirkuk brew is oil -- the area has 584 wells -- and who will control it.

Ihsan shrugged off the importance of that issue. "The oil will be for all Iraqis," he said. "That can be worked out."

The cabinet of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has approved a draft hydrocarbon law to divide Iraq's oil revenue but this has not yet been debated by parliament.

Iraq is estimated to have the world's third-largest oil reserves, in fields in the Shi'ite south and in northern Iraq, mainly around Kirkuk.

Ihsan, who was educated in Britain and served as the Kurdish Regional Government's Human Rights Minister before taking up his present post in May last year, had blunt criticism for the central government in Baghdad, whom he described as incompetent foot-draggers.

"There are no leaders in Baghdad. There is incompetence. And there is a new Arab chauvinism, people who just don't accept Kurds," he said.

U.S. officials have quietly suggested to the Kurds that they postpone the referendum but Ihsan said it would be wrong "for the Americans to listen to terrorist bombs more than the words of their only friends (the Kurds) in the region."
Reuters