A delegation of Iraqi Kurds has handed the UN a petition calling for an independent Kurdistan. The petition was signed by more than 1.7 million Kurds, almost half the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. The petition, signed by residents in "southern Kurdistan," calls for a referendum that will lead to the independence of Kurdistan and the breakup of Iraq.
| Pretty good diploclub, huh? |
UN spokesman Fred Eckhard confirmed that the organistation received the petition on Wednesday night, however, he said that the UN receives similar petitions on a "routine" basis.
| "We don't intend to pay any attention to it unless it's accompanied by gunfire..." |
The petition was handed to Carina Perelli, director of the UN electoral assistance division that is helping to organize Iraq's January election. The UN fears that an independent Kurdish state might lead to the breakup of Iraq. It has also adopted several resolutions stressing the need to preserve Iraq's unity.
| Resolve and be damned. "Iraq" has historically been two to three areas occasionally united, now with a thin veneer of Arabism. They don't like each other. Their parents didn't like each other. Their grandparents didn't like each other. |
"We have all been working on the basis that you are going to have a unitary state, an Iraq that is united and at peace with itself and with its neighbors," Secretary-General Annan said during a recent press conference.
| "... whether they like it or not!" |
Eariler this week, a delegation from the Kurdish Referendum Movement met with UN officials. Iraq's interim government along with Turkey, which has its own Kurdish population with aspirations for independence, strongly oppose an independent Kurdish state. The statement, signed by the movement members, demanded appointing a special UN envoy to the Kurdish region and the dispatch of a delegation to survey "the true will of the Kurdish people ... and to take practical steps for conducting a referendum to allow Kurdish people to exercise their right of self-determination".
| On the spot are you, Kofi? Lemme, see... My guess is that he'll ignore it. |
The Kurds, who form about 20 per cent of Iraq's 25 million population, have several well-organised political parties and an elected parliament. They eariler pledged that the Kurdish region will be maintained under the new constitution due to be drawn up after the Iraq's elections, scheduled for January. However, the Referendum Movement's statement stressed that "the Kurds are a distinctive nation different ethnically, culturally and philosophically from Iraqi Arabs".
| "We may have our faults, but we're not nearly as nutty as they are. Not by a long shot!" |
"Kurdistan was forcibly annexed to Iraq without any respect for the wish of the Kurdish people, (and) that for the last 80 years the Kurds have been subjected by the Iraqi Arab state to repression, enslavement and genocide," the statetment added. According to the statement, since 1991, "the Kurds under international protection have been exercising de facto independence ... (and) they do not wish to be controlled by an Arab-dominated Iraq". |