Kurdistan Observer

Kurdish MPs Vote To Unify Provincial Government

ARBIL, (Northern Kurdistan), May 7, 2006 (AFP) - Kurdish lawmakers in Iraq's northern Kurdistan on Sunday voted for a single administration to run their autonomous region, ending the previous system of two separate local governments.

"We now have one government for Kurdistan," the speaker of the Kurdish parliament, Adnan Mufti, said after the 111 parliamentarians voted unanimously in favour of one administration.

Until now, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was solely responsible for running Sulaimaniyah province, and Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) was running Arbil and Dohuk.

With Sunday's unanimous voting, the two administrations were merged into one single administration and a new cabinet was to be formed by February 22.

Mufti said the new cabinet will have 27 ministers, with PUK and PDK each having 11 ministers and the rest will be from other smaller parties.

A host of Iraqi leaders and international officials led by US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad were present for the voting session of the Kurdish parliament Sunday.

It was still not clear whether the peshmerga forces of the two administrations were to be merged or not, but key ministries of finance, interior and justice were to be unified.

On January 21, Talabani and Barzani had agreed to create a sole administration for the entire Kurdistan, seen paving the way for an eventual autonomy for the region.

The single administration is also expected to reaffirm Kurdish territorial claims, especially for the ethnically mixed oil-hub of Kirkuk that Kurds consider their own and is located just south of their autonomous region.