KurdistanObserver.com

Mulla Bakhtiar: We Will Take Over Kirkuk If Referendum Not Held in 2007

Cihan News Agency

Sulaimani (Southern Kurdistan), December 26, -- We will take over Kirkuk if the Iraqi government does not hold a referendum on Kirkuk in 2007, said Mulla Bakhtiar, a local MP from the Iraqi Kurdistan Patriotic Party (PUK).

The PUK held a meeting in Kirkuk addressing article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, which regards the fate of the oil rich Kurdistani (northern Iraqi) city of Kirkuk as well as other disputed areas in Iraq.

They criticized the Iraq Study Group report. The report recommended the U.S. military mission in Iraq reduce it’s profile, by shifting to advising, training and supporting Iraqi forces who would take the lead in securing their own country.

At the meeting held at a school in Kirkuk, parliament member Bakhtiar expressed the importance Kirkuk held for Kurds. He declared that the Kurds did not accept the Baker plan, and that they would not give up their fight under any circumstances.

Threatening to annex Kirkuk, Bakhtiar said at the meeting that if the referendum was not held in November 2007 "then we will take over Kirkuk and it will be part of Kurdistan."

Chairman of the Turkmen Democratic Union Party Seyfin Demirci, who also attended the meeting, supported the referendum for Kirkuk in 2007.

"Everyone is expressing their opinion here," said Demirci, continuing, "we believe that the Turkmen population in Iraq will regain its rights with the referendum."

The report, which was drafted by a committee headed by Hamilton-Baker, was heavily criticized, and it was alleged to be prepared on the basis of a Sunni-Arabian report drafted by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

cihannews com

Kirkuk city lies just south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and it is not under the full control of Kurdistan Regional Government administration.

The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's oil industry.

A referendum is to be held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.