Iraq's Kurdish minority may give up its demand for the right to secede in order to enable a compromise on a new constitution, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday, as protests against a proposed federal charter continued for a second day. Mullah Bakhtiyar, a senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, said all parties were showing flexibility in order to finish drafting the constitution.  "As for the self-determination for the Kurds, this issue did not enjoy the support of Sunnis or Shiites and we almost gave up this demand," he said.
| They have the Peshmerga, so they have a de facto right to secession, even if they don't enshire it into law ... |
The Kurds have enjoyed de-facto independence since 1991. If they drop their demand to guarantee the right of self-determination — a codeword for eventual secession that goes beyond mere federalism — it would represent a major concession and would remove an obstacle to agreement on the charter by next Monday's deadline. The other main outstanding dispute concerns the role of Islam in the new state, in which the Kurds and secular groups are pitted against Islamist parties representing Iraq's Shiite majority. "As for the issue of Islam's role, negotiations are still underway," Bakhtiyar, told The Associated Press from the Kurdish city of Sulemaniyah.
On Saturday, leaders of all factions continued a series of meetings in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni representative on the drafting committee, said "deep differences" had emerged after Shiites demanded that the new charter should explicitly state that the decrees of their religious leadership were sacred — something both the Sunnis and Kurds oppose. As the Monday deadline to finish the constitution approached, Sunni Arabs and some Shiites rallied in Baghdad and elsewhere Friday to protest calls for a federated state. On Saturday, about 300 Arabs in the northern oil city of Kirkuk demonstrated against federalism, chanting "Yes to unity, no to federalism." |