Leaders in Iraq agree on Kurds’ autonomy

Edward Wong/NYT NYT

KIRKUK, Iraq The major political parties of the Iraqi Governing Council agreed at a meeting with Kurdish leaders on Thursday evening and Friday morning that the northern Kurdish region should keep much of the autonomy that it has held for the last 12 years, a senior Kurdish official said.

That includes allowing the region to remain together as one political body in a federalist system rather than dividing it up into several provinces, as some American officials had proposed, said the official, Barham Salih, prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two governing political parties in the Kurdish area.

Support of Governing Council members for broad Kurdish autonomy conflicts with the plans of the Bush administration, which is seeking to force Kurdish leaders to compromise on their demands for autonomous powers under the new government.

L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the top American administrator in Iraq, has met twice with Kurdish leaders in the last eight days, including Salih, to ask them to withdraw some of their requests, only to be rebuffed.

The issue of Kurdish autonomy has emerged as the most pressing one confronting American officials as they try to create a transitional government in Iraq by July 1.

There is enormous reluctance by some senior officials in the White House to divide Iraq into a federalist state along ethnic lines. Close regional allies of the United States like Turkey and Saudi Arabia have also chafed at the idea, for reasons related to their concerns over ethnic and religious nationalism.

Salih, who attended the two-day meeting with Governing Council representatives, said in a telephone interview that the two main Kurdish parties were willing to accept that they would not enjoy all the powers they have held since after the Gulf war of 1991, when the United States and Britain declared northern Iraq a no-flight zone and protected it from Saddam Hussein’s forces.

The Kurds are ready to cede matters of foreign, monetary and national defense policy over to the Iraqi national government, whatever that will be, Salih said. Kurdish militiamen known as pesh merga might become part of the national military, though they would answer to the Kurdish authorities, he added.

There was no dissension from the need to respect and defend many of the elements of the status quo in Kurdistan, including the governing structure of the Kurdish region, Salih said.

He added that those attending the meeting talked at length about the future of Kirkuk, a city rich in oil and agricultural land about 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, north of Baghdad and just south of the Kurdish region.

The Kurdish parties, understanding that Kirkuk is crucial to the economic independence of the Kurdish area, have demanded control of the city of one million people. Some participants in the meeting supported a Kurdish proposal that the governing of Kirkuk be determined by a popular vote of the people in the area, Salih said.

There was a consensus to accept a democratic tool or referendum by which people will decide if the region should be part of Kurdistan or part of some other area of Iraq, he added.

Because of Kirkuk’s rich natural resources and its ethnic divisions, any popular vote held to determine its future would almost certainly stir enormous unrest throughout Iraq.

The ethnic makeup of the city’s population is largely split among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. Less than two weeks ago, thousands of Arabs and Turkmens in Kirkuk held a protest against the Kurdish demand for autonomy. The rally ended in a flurry of gunfire between protesters and Kurdish guerrilla fighters that killed four people in the crowd.

The outcome of a popular vote is hard to predict, because no accurate census of the population has been done since 1957. The 173rd Airborne Brigade, which controls the area, estimates that the population is 35 percent Arab, 35 percent Kurd, 26 percent Turkmen and 4 percent other, though those numbers are just rough guesses, said Major Douglas Vincent, a spokesman for the coalition forces. Furthermore, the numbers are changing day by day, as Kurds move into the area and many Arabs move out.

The two-day meeting between Governing Council party representatives and Kurdish leaders took place at Salahuddin, a mountain town northeast of Erbil, capital of the half of the Kurdish region controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Party. Attendees included representatives from the Dawa Islamic Party, the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi National Accord and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Several of the representatives could not be reached for comment on Friday evening.

In recent interviews with The New York Times, some prominent members of the Governing Council have said they favor a federalist system in Iraq, with the Kurdish region remaining as one autonomous body.

"There will be a special structure for Kurdistan, and some kind of federal structure for Iraq, but we haven’t gone into the details of that structure," said Adnan Pachachi, current head of the Governing Council.