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Baghdad: A new UN-backed plan to resolve a deadlock over Iraq’s provincial elections would let the polls go ahead across almost all of the country but leave the fate of the disputed city of Kirkuk undecided, politicians said on Tuesday.
The proposal, presented at late-night negotiations between political leaders, could offer a way out of the impasse which has threatened to delay elections seen by Washington as a key test of Iraq’s fledgling democracy, the politicians said. "I believe this new proposal will be agreed by all the parties, because we have reached a dead end and there must be a new solution," said Eyad Al Samarrai, a top Sunni Arab lawmaker.
However, lawmakers postponed a vote on the law yesterday, the second time in three days that they failed to resolve the standoff. The deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament said a fresh session would be held today.
The elections are scheduled for October 1 but their timing is in jeopardy after Kurds refused to back a law authorising them and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, vetoed it. Kurds fear measures in the law would cost them control of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city they regard as their ancestral homeland and hope to include in their semi-autonomous region.
The UN plan would allow provincial elections to go ahead in Iraq’s 17 other provinces. Controversial issues surrounding Kirkuk would be left for another law later on. The reworded draft secured the backing of Kurdish parties that had previously been strongly against the proposed legislation but ran into opposition from Turkmen and Arab politicians, a parliamentary official said.
The previous draft had drawn an angry tirade from the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Massud Barzani. "Kurds are for the distribution of authority in Kirkuk but not equally dividing it," he said.
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