Arabs, Turkmen want UN, EU election observers in disputed Iraqi city

Jan 31, 2010, 17:10 GMT

Kirkuk, Iraq - Arab and Turkmen politicians on Sunday demanded the inclusion of international observers in the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk during next month's parliamentary election.

'We demand the active and strong participation of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and the European Union and the Arab League ... especially in (ethnically) mixed areas, to supervise the counting, sorting and transportation of ballots,' local council member Sheikh Barhan al-Mazhar al-Asi told reporters.

He made the call 'to ensure ... fair elections, free from fraud,' he said.

The Electoral Commission on Sunday said 40 candidates from Kirkuk were among the 500 disqualified from the elections nationwide for their connections to the banned former ruling Baath Party.

Kirkuk is located in one of the most ethnically diverse in Iraq. Many Kurds hope to make the city the capital of a future independent state. Arab and Turkmen politicians view the city and its nearby oil fields as integral parts of Iraq.

The issue of voting in the region has proved so contentious that it has been left out of previous polls, and a debate over voting there stalled the passage of Iraq's new electoral law for months.

'We fear bias in the (electoral commission's) work,' Sheikh Hassan Ali al-Jaburi, a member of the Kirkuk Arab Political Council, which also represents Turkmen, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'We call upon the president and the prime minister and parliament to supervise the elections in Kirkuk themselves in order to ensure there is no fraud or manipulation,' he said.

'We also call for international, Arab and Islamic supervision of the election, to ensure that the polls do not favour the strong over the weak in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk,' al-Jaburi said.

Talal Qassab, a leading Turkmen politician from the city, called for particularly close supervision of ethnically mixed areas of Kirkuk and other similar areas of the country, which he called 'particularly sensitive.'

'We expect that political pressure will affect the outcome of the election, so we call for international monitors in these areas,' he said.

Even after most US forces returned to garrisons last June, US soldiers continue to man checkpoints alongside Kurdish and Arab Iraqis along the so-called 'trigger-line' that divides areas under de facto Kurdish and Arab control in the northern regions of Kirkuk, Diyala and Nineveh.