Mosul Kurds threaten to form parallel provincial government

Aug 7, 2009, 15:16 GMT

Mosul, Iraq - The leading Kurdish politician in Iraq's restive northern province of Nineveh on Friday threatened to form a parallel government to the ruling Arab-nationalist coalition there.

'We will establish a second administration in the province of Nineveh if no agreement is reached with the (ruling) Hadba coalition,' Khasro Koran, the head of the largest Kurdish party in the province, told the German Press Agency dpa from the provincial capital, Mosul.

The Arab-nationalist Hadba coalition won January's provincial council elections on a platform of taking power back from the Brotherly List, which had won the 2005 polls in part because of a widespread Sunni boycott of the voting.

Since that election, the new governor has vowed to rid Kurdish militias from the province and has described areas bordering the semi-autonomous Kurdish region as 'lawless' for the influence the militias have there.

'The Brotherly List took a third of the seats in the Nineveh provincial council, and the Hadba coalition took roughly 50 per cent of the seats,' Koran said.

Given those results, 'We had high hopes that there could be serious dialogue between the two coalitions in the formation of a government for the province,' he added.

Instead, Koran said, 'there are premeditated plots to expel the Kurdish parties ... The Hadba coalition has insisted on continuing to marginalise and exclude the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for the Brotherly List.'

Koran's comments came amid efforts by Kurdish- and Arab-Iraqi politicians to defuse escalating tensions between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Arbil over land and oil in disputed territories claimed by both, including areas of Nineveh.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Arbil last week to meet with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani for talks aimed at ending the impasse, which both had previously called the greatest threat facing Iraq today.

But the area, which is among the most ethnically and religiously diverse in the country, remains among the most dangerous.

On Friday, at least 27 people were killed to the north of Mosul when a man driving a truck detonated explosives outside a Shiite mosque north of Mosul.

The night before, two Christian Iraqi women were injured by bombs left by the side of the road near their houses.