KIRKUK, Iraq - Turkmen and Arab Shiites demonstrated Friday in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk against the Kurdish push to annex the city.
"No, no to federalism; no, no to the division of Iraq," a few hundred Shiites from radical cleric Moqtada Sadr's movement shouted as they trickled out from the Khazal al-Tamimi mosque in the city's centre.
Local Sadr representative Sheikh Ahmed al-Lamy was explicit about their opposition to the Kurdish push to implement Iraq's interim constitution, which calls for the return of tens of thousands of Kurds who were expelled from Kirkuk.
The demonstrators are "here to denounce the transitional law and its article 58," Lamy said.
Article 58 lays out clear steps for resolving former president Saddam Hussein's four-decade policy of arabisation, in which he moved Shiites from the south to Kirkuk and kicked out the city's native Kurds.
"Arabs are Iraqis and we must continue to live with our Kurdish, Turkmen and Christian brothers in the city of Kirkuk, and nobody has the right to chase us out," Lamy said.
Iraq's outgoing foreign minister, Kurd Hoshyar al-Zebari, said Friday the country's leading Shiite and Kurdish political blocs had agreed that the next government would implement Iraq's transitional law on Kirkuk.
Zebari said the new government was committed to resettling displaced Kurds in the city and arbitrating property disputes between the Kurds and the Arabs who were brought into Kirkuk to replace them.
Kurdish leaders say they want to make Kirkuk part of a federal zone. Kirkuk's final status will be settled after the drafting of a permanent constitution and the conducting of a census.
03/18/2005 16:03 GMT