| 2008: Committee to settle oil contracts issue – Barazani |
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June 28, 2008 Iraqi Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nejervan al-Barazani revealed that a committee was set up with the Baghdad central government during his recent visit to the Iraqi capital to settle the issue of oil contracts as well as the oil & gas law. "The committee formed during my visit to Baghdad is composed of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, myself, Vice Presidents Tareq al-Hashimi and Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Deputy Premier Burham Saleh and Roz Nouri Shawis, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)'s politburo," Barazani said during a press conference in Arbil on Saturday, attended by the correspondent of Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI). "The committee, which will start its work next week, aims to reach a solution for the issue of oil contracts and the law on oil & gas," he added. He underlined that the oil contracts "signed by the government of Iraqi Kurdistan was a right granted by the constitution." The Iraqi government had refused to recognize the oil contracts signed by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government with foreign corporations to explore and invest oilfields in the KRG's territories. On the issues of the Region Guards, or the peshmerga in Kurdish, and the means to merge them into the Iraqi army in line with the Iraqi armed forces' criteria, Barazani replied that a joint committee was formed 18 months ago the settle the issue of the peshmerga. "The committee was composed of the U.S. and British sides, the Iraqi defense ministry and a representative of the KRG, but failed to reach a final solution," the Kurdish premier explained. The Baghdad government had declined to pay the salaries of more than 190,000 peshmerga personnel from the central defense ministry budget. Asked on the issue of article 140 of the constitution pertaining to normalization in Kirkuk, Barazani said there was no "political orientation to marginalize the article's application." Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to normalization in Kirkuk, an important and mixed city of Kurds, Turcomans, Christians, Arabs and Assyrians. Kurds seek to include the city into the autonomous Iraq's Kurdistan region, while Sunni Muslims, Turcomans and Shiites oppose the incorporation. The article stipulates that all Arabs in Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in southern and central Iraqi areas, and formerly displaced residents returned to Kirkuk, 250 km northeast of Baghdad. 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 to six months. The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had forced over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's oil industry. Answering a question by VOI correspondent on his position regarding the recent report by UN envoy Staffan De Mistura, Barazani replied that the Iraqi government "was discontented with part of the first report just like our government refused it and would even refuse future reports if they came similar to that one." De Mistura had submitted a report in the form of recommendations for the Iraqi government in early June providing that four of the disputed areas would under the administration of both the central and Iraqi Kurdistan governments. The report suggested that the districts of al-Hamdaniya and Mandili come under the central government's administration while the Kurds would be entitled to run the districts of Makhmour and Aqra. Source: Voices of Iraq |