Baghdad Governor demands representation of Iraq’s Provinces in the NCSP

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Governor of Baghdad, Salah Abdul-Razzaq, has demanded the representation of the Iraqi Provinces in the National Council for Strategic Policies (NCSP), the same way of the representation of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region in the Council, according to the Governor’s office on Sunday.   “The NCSP is planned to lay the strategic polices of the State of Iraq and to draw its future plans,” Governor Salah Abdul-Razzaq said in the statement, copy of which was received by IraqiNews.com news agency.   “Those policies also concern the Iraqi Provinces, because they would be practiced inside those Provinces, or that the impact of their results on the Iraqi citizens in all those Provinces,” the statement confirmed.   It stressed that “there must be a clear voice by the Provinces in the NCSP and that the representatives of the Provinces defend the interests and rights of their Provinces, similar to other constitutional or government institutions.”   “The simple presence of the leaders of the political blocs or the Three Presidential Chairmanships can’t compensate the presence of representatives of the Provinces, because they represent the Federal powers, that had always expressed the Central Government’s viewpoints,” the statement stressed.   “If the NCSP only represents the officials of the Federal Government, or the Three Executive, Legislative and Judicial authorities, as well as the political blocs, represented in the Parliament; why only the Kurdistan Region is represented in the Council, despite fact that it is a local authority, similar to the Provinces that are not organized in a Region?, and there must not be any difference between the Provinces and the Region, in their defense for the interests of their citizens,” the statement concluded.   SKH (TR)/SR 706