dimanche 3 février 2008

UN envoy meets local officials in Kerkuk

Kerkuk - Voices of Iraq
Sunday , 03 /02 /2008

"The Turcoman parties agreed to unify political and media discourse and that article 140 has ended legally and constitutionally with the expiry of its deadline set in the constitution," Saad al-Din Arkij told VOI on Saturday. Arkij said an agreement was reached during the meeting to have Kerkuk as an independent province to be run by the groups in the city and in a way to be agreed on later.

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Kirkuk, Feb 3, (VOI) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy Andrea Gilmore is holding a meeting with members of the Kirkuk local council on the mechanism to implement article 140 of the Iraqi constitution pertaining to fate of the oil-rich city and other disputed areas during the next six months.

"Members of the local council from the Turcoman Front did not attend the meeting because they are in Baghdad," a source from the Kirkuk local council told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

The Turcoman parties had met on Saturday in a workshop in Baghdad on the fate of Kirkuk and agreed that article 140 of the constitution dropped legally with the expiry of its deadline. The meeting was attended by a number of Iraqi MPs and ministers.

"The Turcoman parties agreed to unify political and media discourse and that article 140 has ended legally and constitutionally with the expiry of its deadline set in the constitution," Saad al-Din Arkij told VOI on Saturday.

Arkij said an agreement was reached during the meeting to have Kirkuk as an independent province to be run by the groups in the city and in a way to be agreed on later.

Article 140 provides for normalization of Kirkuk through having back its Kurdish and Turcoman inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs relocated in the city during the former regime's time to their original provinces in central and southern Iraq.

The article also calls for conducting a census to be followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having it as an independent province.

These stages were supposed to end on December 31, 2007, a deadline that was later extended to six months.

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=68244&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1E

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