Iraqi election law stalled as Kurds hold firm on Kirkuk (Roundup)

Nov 2, 2009, 17:08 GMT

Baghdad - Iraqi lawmakers on Monday once again postponed voting on an election law as Iraqi Kurds vowed they would make 'no concessions whatsoever' on voting in the disputed city of Kirkuk.

'The Kurdistan Alliance Bloc will not make any concessions whatsoever on voting in ... Kirkuk,' Kurdish member of parliament Adil Barwari told reporters.

'We insist on holding elections in a timely fashion, with the rest of the country,' he said. 'Any proposal to postpone the elections will not be accepted.'

Rancorous debate over voting in the northern city has repeatedly derailed a vote on a law to cover voting in parliamentary elections now scheduled for January 16. The question was left off the agenda for Thursday and Sunday's parliamentary sessions after lawmakers failed to reach a consensus position.

Many Iraqi Kurds hope to make Kirkuk, and its nearby oil fields, the capital of a future independent state, calling it their 'Jerusalem.' Arab and Turkmen politicians view the city and surrounding al-Tamim province as integral parts of Iraq.

Since the law must be in place 90 days before voting begins, a January 16 vote appears less and less likely as the impasse continues.

Seventy-one lawmakers on Monday petitioned the head of the parliament not to postpone the elections in Kirkuk.

'Holding timely elections is a popular demand,' Kurdish lawmaker Walid Shirka told a Baghdad press conference. He described the 71 signatories as from 'various parliamentary blocs.'

Kurdish lawmakers back a UN proposal that would see Kirkuk vote with the rest of the country, using 2009 voter registration rolls that show a marked rise in the number of Kurdish voters. Arab and Turkmen politicians look with suspicion at the rise in Kurdish voters, and want 2004 rolls used instead.

Neither side has shown any indication it will back down. At a Monday press conference in Baghdad, Saad al-Bazanji, the head of the Kurdish parliamentary bloc, called a new UN proposal aimed at breaking the impasse 'curious backpedaling on the (UN) mission's stance on Iraq.'

The new proposal would grant a compensatory seat to the Arab and Turkmen parties that win the highest percentage of the vote in the event Kurdish candidates sweep the election, and would treat the results as provisional, subject to a review of the voter rolls.

Iraqi lawmakers have been seeking a consensus solution to the issue for fear that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself an ethnic Kurd, might veto an election law passed over Kurdish objections.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, an Arab Sunni Muslim, on Monday said he would intervene if one side sought a solution at the expense of all groups in the city.

'I hope no one will impose a solution that does not meet the minimum standards of justice sought by all parties,' al-Hashemi said. 'If so, I will use my constitutional powers to resolve the situation justly.'

Omar al-Juburi, a member of the Arab Political Council of Kirkuk, expressed frustration at the Kurdish stance.

'The Kurds have rejected all previous proposals that we have backed,' he said.

'We have made our position clear,' Sheikh Abdel-Rahman Manshid al- Assi, another member of the Arab caucus, said late last week. 'We will not relinquish Kirkuk ... It is up to the Kurds to make concessions.'

Kirkuk was left out of previous elections after lawmakers failed to come to a formula for counting the region's votes. But Massoud Barzani, president of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, has said that the Kurds will not accept any solution that gives Kirkuk 'a special status' in the 2010 polls.

Barzani has warned in the past that the issue could spark 'a real civil war' if not peacefully resolved. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has likewise called the dispute over Kirkuk and similarly divided regions of Nineveh province to the north, 'the most serious issue now facing Iraq.'

That tension has been reflected in regular, if relatively small, attacks in the region. On Monday a bomb planted by the side of the road in al-Wasiti, in the southwest of the province, injured one civilian, police told Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news agency.