Posted on 04/14/2008 9:10:16 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Baghdad, Apr 14, (VOI) – A Kurdish legislator revealed at the Iraqi parliament on Monday that the Iraqi Kurdistan Region's talks with the central government in Baghdad resulted in an agreement to incorporate the peshmerga, or the local Kurdish fighters, into Iraq's security system.
"The region's talks with the central government focused on three issues: the peshmerga force and its budget, the law on oil and gas and a timetable for applying item 140 of the Iraqi constitution," Mhamma Khalil, a member of parliament from the Kurdistan Coalition (KC), told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
A delegation from the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) under the region's Prime Minister, Nejervan al-Barazani, had talks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as senior government officials on Saturday and Sunday.
Baghdad so far has refused to recognize all the contracts signed by the KRG with global oil companies to invest in the region and threatened to ban these companies from future deals with the Iraqi oil ministry. The Kurds, however, argue that the contracts were "legal" and in line with Iraq's constitution.
Maliki’s government also opposes to pay the 190,000-man peshmerga forces from the Iraqi defense ministry budget.
Article 140 provides for normalization of Kirkuk by returning its Kurdish and Turcoman inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs relocated in the city during the former regime's time to their original provinces in central and southern Iraq.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having it as an independent province.
These stages were supposed to end on December 31, 2007, a deadline that was later extended by six months.
Kirkuk, a city of mixed population of ethnic and religious groups, lies 250 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
AE
News ping!
Sure appears on the surface that more positive progress is being legislated by the central government of Iraq. A region so long fragmented and torn between stronger ethnic entities and state powers may in the long haul fair better to be fully incorporated into this new Iraq. Just from the point of view regarding trade barriers, tariffs, if the region is a province of Iraq it may have better access for imports and exports of its goods, oil, manufactured articles, whatever, then if it where a separate country. Why not have huge oil/gas pipelines connecting the north and the southern oil fields where the free slow of drilled oil can make it’s way quickly into refinery and oil/gas exportation terminals with minimum transport cost, and pass the gained revenues unto those major provinces directly contributing to the countries future oil wealth. Same can go for al Anbar that is suspected of having a lot of oil. Call it a tri-lateral oil/gas distribution system. All win in the end.
I like what I see happening.
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