Crocker: 'It is going to be very hard to stick to the original timetable' for Kirkuk referendum

Above: A shopkeeper sorts through the wreckage of his mobile phone store, damaged Wednesday night in a car bomb attack in Kirkuk which killed at least 2 and wounded 30.

A referendum that will determine the status of the potential flashpoint Iraqi city of Kirkuk is unlikely to go ahead on schedule, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq has said...

"There is a general realisation out there that, as a practical matter, it is going to be very hard to stick to the original timetable," U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker told Reuters in an interview in Baghdad late on Thursday...

Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic mixing pot of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians Turkmen and Armenians 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, has plenty of oil, but may not have much time left to avoid being dragged into Iraq's intractable cycle of sectarian bloodshed, analysts fear.

Kurdish nationalists want Kirkuk included in their semi-autonomous region and the referendum held by the year's end.

But Arabs and Turkmen fear they will be pushed out of the city if the vote goes ahead and want the referendum either stalled or put off for good.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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