BAGHDAD (AFP) — Fifty Iraqi MPs on Monday condemned a planned new constitution for Iraqi Kurdistan that is to be put to a referendum at the end of July.
"Not only is it not compatible with the federal constitution but violates it and gives the (Kurdish) region more power than to Baghdad," Ossama al-Nujaifi of the secular Iraqi National List told reporters.
"This constitution stirs hatred between the different components of the Iraqi people ... and constitutes a provocation towards Iraq's neighbours by trying to build a Greater Kurdistan," he said.
Nujaifi signed a petition slamming the Kurdish constitution along with 49 other MPs, including Omar al-Juburi of the Concord Front, a Sunni bloc with 39 seats in parliament.
For Fawzi Akram of the Shiite Sadrist group, "this constitution will lead to a crisis in relations between the different components of the country."
Kurdish deputy Mahmud Othman, meanwhile, called for political leaders in Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan "to open a serious dialogue" and criticised the haste with which the referendum was decided.
"This was not the right way," he told AFP.
On June 24, Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan passed the new constitution in which it laid claim to the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk, a move likely to increase ethnic tension.
The text also said that areas within Nineveh and Diyala provinces were part of Iraqi Kurdistan. It is to be put before Kurdish voters for ratification on July 25.
The United Nations on April 22 handed over to the Baghdad government an eagerly awaited report on disputed areas of Iraq, including Kirkuk, in which it refused to contemplate the division of the deeply-contested province.
The Kurds have long striven to expand their northern territory beyond its current three provinces to other areas where the population was historically Kurdish.
Kurdistan, whose capital is Arbil in northern Iraq, has its own flag which is raised beside the federal flag, and also has its own slogan, national anthem and national day.
Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jXYB05UObNTY93OMYbLuAECuOc_A
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