- BAGHDAD -- Kurds in Iraq
have rejected a US-backed plan for very limited autonomy in the north of
the country, which has enjoyed a status close to independence for more
than a decade. "It gave us even less than Saddam Hussein offered us
in the past," a Kurdish leader said yesterday.
-
- The Kurds, who have fought against control by Baghdad
for most of the last 80 years, restated their determination to keep substantial
control of their own affairs to Iraqi Arab political leaders during two
days of talks last week in the Kurdish mountain headquarters at Salahudin
in northern Iraq.
-
- The US and senior Arab members of the interim Iraqi Governing
Council have been pressing the Kurds to accept integration into a post-Saddam
Iraq, with only local powers for the Kurdish authorities. Massoud Barzani
and Jalal Talabani, the top Kurdish leaders, told seven or eight council
members, all former members of the Iraqi opposition, that this was wholly
unrealistic.
-
- The Kurds have said they are willing to turn over control
of foreign policy, defence, fiscal policy and natural resources to a central
government. But in practice they will retain most of the powers they won
a dozen years ago when Saddam Hussein withdrew his armies from Kurdistan.
-
- The Kurdish leaders are conscious that they are in a
very strong position. They lead the third-largest Iraqi community, smaller
in numbers than the Shia and the Sunni Arabs but well organised and armed.
They are also the only Iraqi community which supports a long-term American
occupation, and Iraqi Kurdistan is the only part of the country where US
forces can move in relative safety.
-
- Mr Barzani and Mr Talabani reminded the Arab parties
and individuals opposed to Saddam Hussein that they had been committed
since 1992 to a federal Iraq in which the Kurdish region would rule itself.
The Kurds will not declare independence because they know that this would
precipitate an invasion by Turkey and also be fiercely opposed by Iran
and Syria.
-
- The result of the meeting at Salahudin has been portrayed
by some Kurdish leaders as a compromise, but in fact shows that they need
to concede very little to the US or Iraqi Arab leaders. Since the dissolution
of the Iraqi army by the US in May the Kurdish peshmerga have been the
only significant Iraqi armed force.
-
- A Kurdish leader said that the Kurds were prepared to
negotiate over the future of Kirkuk, the oil province of the north, recaptured
by the Kurds during the war last year. It is unlikely that they would ever
give up Kirkuk, from which many of them were driven by Saddam Hussein.
-
- The Kurds want their autonomy to be enshrined in Iraqi
law as swiftly as possible, rather than being dependent on the outcome
of future Iraqi elections.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=480030
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