Kurd President Barzani: Kurds will 'intervene' in Turkey if it interferes in Kirkuk referendum

Above: Iraqi military forces under Kurdish control. Kurds also maintain a separate militia called the Pesh Merga, some 50,000 strong. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution calls for "normalizing the status" of Kirkuk, resulting in the expulsion of Arab families from the oil-rich city ahead of a referendum determining whether Kirkuk should be annexed to the Kurdish provinces. Turkey and Iran fear that if the Kurds gain control of Kirkuk, Iraq's Kurds will form their own state and Kurdish militants in the surrounding countries would increase their campaign for independence. Turkey has threatened to intervene if the Kurds take over Kirkuk. The Iraq Study Group recommended delaying the referendum.

BAGHDAD: Turkey must not interfere in the Kurds' bid to attach Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk to the Kurdish semiautonomous zone, the top official in Iraqi Kurdistan said in remarks broadcast Saturday.

Otherwise, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said, Iraq's Kurds will retaliate by intervening in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, where insurgents have battled for decades to establish their own autonomy.

Barzani, president of the 15-year-old Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, issued the warning after last week's endorsement by the Iraqi government of a decision to relocate and compensate thousands of Arabs who moved to the city as part of Saddam Hussein's campaign to push out the Kurds.

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

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