ياشاسين آذربايجان - Long live Azerbaijan

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More than 1,000 Sunni Arabs and Turkomen staged a demonstration Saturday to protest calls by Kurds to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to their autonomous region as Iraqi officials met in Baghdad to defuse tension over the disputed city. Iraqi lawmakers are to meet Sunday in a special session of parliament aimed at resolving a power-sharing disagreement in Kirkuk, which has blocked legislation approving U.S.-backed provincial elections.

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More than 1,000 Sunni Arabs and Turkomen staged a demonstration Saturday to protest calls by Kurds to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to their autonomous region as Iraqi officials met in Baghdad to defuse tension over the disputed city.

Iraqi lawmakers are to meet Sunday in a special session of parliament aimed at resolving a power-sharing disagreement in Kirkuk, which has blocked legislation approving U.S.-backed provincial elections.

The dispute is emerging as one of the biggest threats to the Shiite-led government’s efforts to heal the country’s sectarian rifts and prevent a new cycle of violence.

Protesters in the town of Hawija, west of Kirkuk, carried banners, refusing to accept incorporating Kirkuk in the Kurdish-ruled region, said Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir of the Kirkuk police.

No violence was reported on Saturday, but the atmosphere was reportedly tense in Kirkuk, where a suicide bombing killed 25 people Monday during a Kurdish protest.

“I came back from Kirkuk half an hour ago. The situation is very tense there,” said Sadettin Ergenc, a Turkoman lawmaker and the head of the Iraqi Turkoman Front, an umbrella organization defending the rights of Iraq’s Turkoman minority.

“The Kurds want to lay bricks for an independent state, but escalating tensions will not bring any good to anyone.”

Ergenc predicted that Sunday’s special session on Kirkuk might not solve the crisis but that provincial elections could be postponed in Kirkuk as suggested by the United Nations.

Iraq’s presidential council rejected the draft provincial elections law and sent it back to parliament after President Jalal Talabani — a Kurd — criticized it. Parliament approved the law despite a Kurdish walkout to protest a secret ballot on a section dealing with Kirkuk.

The election law says the provincial council in Kirkuk should be divided equally among Kurds, Turkomen and Arabs. But Kurds and their allies, who currently hold a majority on the council, oppose that. The dispute has been a major factor in stalling the draft law.

The draft election law also would transfer security responsibilities in Kirkuk to military units brought from central and southern Iraq instead of those already there — an apparent move against Kurdish forces heavily deployed in the area.

“Why is the peshmerga (Kurdish militia) in the center of Kirkuk?” asked Ergenc. “Kirkuk is a city under the rule of the central government and must remain as it is.”

The elections are expected to redistribute power in Iraq’s 18 provinces in what is considered a necessary step toward reconciliation. Many Sunni Arabs boycotted provincial balloting in January 2005, enabling Shiite Muslims and Kurds to win a disproportionate share of power.

Kurds are also at loggerheads with the central government over a new oil law, which regards previous deals between the local Kurdish administration and foreign companies as illegal.

In violence on Saturday in Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one member of the U.S.-allied Sunni fighters and wounded two others, police said.ap

, Voice of a Nation

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