Barzani: 'The Kurds will never relinquish or bargain over Kirkuk... if clause 140 is not implemented, then there will be a real civil war'

Above: A man injured in a bombing in Kirkuk yesterday is treated at a hospital. There were no deaths in the bombing.

The leader of Iraq's Kurdish region warned Tuesday of a "real civil war" if the central government does not implement a constitutional clause on the future of Kirkuk, the oil-rich city claimed by the Kurds.

Control over Kirkuk and the surrounding oil wealth is in dispute between the city's Kurdish, Arab and ethnic Turkish populations. Nationally, the dispute pits the Kurds, who want to annex it to their autonomous region in northern Iraq, against the country's Arab majority and its small minority of Turks, known locally as Turkomen...

"There is procrastination (by the government) and if this issue is not resolved, as I said before, all options are open...frankly I am not comfortable with the behavior and the policy of the federal government on Kirkuk and clause 140," he said...

"The Kurds will never relinquish or bargain over Kirkuk, but we accepted to regain Kirkuk through constitutional and legal methods, but if we despair of those constitutional and legal methods, then we will have the right to resort to other means," Barzani warned.

"If clause 140 is not implemented, then there will be a real civil war," Barzani said, promising to visit Baghdad shortly to discuss the matter with the central government.

Read the rest at AOL News

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