Kurds welcome Biden in Kirkuk

Kirkuk-Biden-Feature KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: A Kurdish member of the Kirkuk provincial council welcomed the U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s visit to the disputed province, reiterating support of the visitor’s suggestion to divide Iraq into three independent countries. Ahmed al-Askari, a member of the Kurdish bloc in the Kirkuk provincial council, told IraqiNews.com news agency that Biden’s visit indicates that “the new U.S. administration is interested in solving Iraqis’ problems in general, mainly Kirkuk.” He reiterated Kurds’ welcome to Biden’s suggestion to divide Iraq, asserting that it paves the way to solving all Iraqis problems. On Monday (Jan. 12) afternoon, Biden arrived on a surprise visit to Iraq and met with Talabani and his deputy, Adel Abdelmahdi. Biden voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq but later became a critic of the war and the way in which President George W. Bush was executing it. He is best known in Iraq as the author of a 2006 plan to divide the country into self-governing Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves – an idea that offended many Iraqi politicians and was quietly put on the back burner as violence ebbed. However, Arabs in the oil-rich province, have a different viewpoint. “The Arab bloc considers carrying out article 23 of the provincial elections law that puts special mechanisms into effect for local elections in Kirkuk as an important part in solving the Kirkuk cause,” Mohamed Kahlil al-Juburi, told IraqiNews.com news agency. He considered article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, which was formed to solve the disputed areas, as a dead article. Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution calls to normalize situations, hold a census, and then hold a referendum in the disputed areas. The Iraqi government failed to fulfill the steps on time, which should have come at the end of 2007. Both Arbil and Baghdad last June agreed on UN input of offering technical support to solve the issue. “Turkomans search for their interests when they hold talks with any U.S. or governmental delegation as they are part of Iraq,” member of Turkomans List, Tahseen Kihya, said. “We talked with the American officials on Biden’s proposal and they underlined that this is above the authority level of the vice president,” Kihya explained. Kurds in the oil-rich Kirkuk city want to annex the governorate to the independent Kurdistan region while its Arab and Turkmen citizens want to keep it under the direct rule of the Baghdad central government. A referendum on its status was to be held in line with article 140 of the constitution, but the implementation of the article and consequently the referendum has been postponed. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the center of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SH (I)/SR 1