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Iraqi
Kurds Eye Oil Revenue Dreams
AP
By
BRIAN MURPHY
Oct 21, 2002
IRBIL, (Southern
Kurdistan)- Iraqi Kurds' dreams for a post-Saddam Iraq include doubling their
share of oil revenues, the speaker of the regional parliament told The
Associated Press Monday.
Under the U.N.
oil-for-food program, the area of northern Iraq controlled by Kurds now gets
13 percent of Iraqi oil revenues. Rosch Shawais, speaker of the 105-seat Iraqi
Kurdish parliament, called that "a start point."
"This percent
should be due to the relative percent of the population," he said.
"I think this should be 27 or 26 percent, but not less than 25
percent."
Attention focused
on the Kurds' financial, political and territorial ambitions has grown along
with the possibility of a U.S.-Iraq war. President Bush has said "regime
change" - perhaps by force - is the only way to stop Iraq from
stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
Shawais's oil
revenue calculations included expanding the territory Kurds run in what they
envision as a federal system emerging if the United States toppled President
Saddam Hussein.
Last week, the top
Iraqi Kurdish military commander, Cmdr. Hamid Efendi, said his forces would
try to capture the prized oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul - now outside the
Western-protected Kurdish enclave - if the United States attacks Saddam.
Protected from
Saddam by American and British warplanes since the 1991 Gulf War, Kurds in
northern Iraq have built what to many looks like a state - with a parliament,
schools, police, media and a military.
Iraqi Kurdish
leaders say they want to remain part of Iraq, but many of their followers talk
openly about aspirations for independence. Neighbors Turkey, Syria and Iran
worry that a U.S. attack would set off the disintegration of Iraq and the rise
of a Kurdish state that would inspire their own restive Kurdish minorities.
Adding to the
tensions, Turkey considers Kirkuk and Mosul, which Iraqi Kurdish leaders want
as part of their territory, an ethnic Turkish heartland. |
