Monday, April 23, 2007
Turkmeneli Party calls for Sharm el-Sheikh conference to declare Kirkuk autonomous
Turkomen,
(VOI) - Turkmeneli Party (TP) on Saturday called on the Sharm al-Sheikh Conference on Iraq to pay due attention to the situation of Turkomans in Iraq and to declare Kirkuk an autonomous province governed by Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans. "Since the establishment of the Iraqi state, the main and chronic problems encountered have revolved around national and ethnic issues. No plan or project has been proposed on the Iraqi political scene to satisfy all Iraqi sects," the party, one of Kirkuk's main Turkoman parties, said in a statement released today, of which the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) managed to obtain a copy.
"We believe that it is necessary to resolve all pending problems before formulating a new political equation. The rights of all sectors of Iraqi society have to be taken into account to achieve stability in the country," the statement added. "We also believe that a proper handling of Turkomans' problems in Iraq should begin with correcting the mistakes made by the administration of Ambassador Paul Bremer, which depended on an incorrect account of the Turkoman population, based on statistics released in 1997, when establishing the national and political quota system."
The statement accused the former Iraqi regime of exerting political pressure on Turkomans, falsifying national statistics and displacing them. "TP believes in national coexistence and the importance of establishing a pluralistic democratic system. We have projects for the administration of Iraq and Kirkuk province. We earlier proposed a project to divide Iraq into six federal regions: two in the north, two in the middle and two in the south. Each region will consist of three provinces," the statement said.
Calling for an autonomous Kirkuk, the statement said, "Having great faith in the federal system, we suggest that the province of Kirkuk should be declared a federal region by itself for an eight-year transitional period under international supervision, with a tripartite administration that includes Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans, taking into full consideration the rights of ChaldoAssyrians. All Turkomans and Arabs and some Kurds support the project for Kirkuk region.
We hope that the Sharm al-Sheikh conference will include this project along with the crisis of Talafar citizens on its agenda and in its final statement," the statement concluded. The province of Kirkuk, 250 km northeast of Baghdad, is home to Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans and ChaldoAssyrians, and is one of the most heated topics on the Iraqi political scene. The province is waiting for the establishment of procedures to normalize the situation by implementing article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, returning displaced Arabs to their homes and offering them 20 million dinars in compensation.
Labels: Article 140, Kirkuk, Sharm al-Sheikh Conference, Turkmeneli Party, Turkomen
