Kurds, Fearing Loss, Say Iraq Vote Hurts Displaced

The appeal from Kurdish lawmakers is the latest sign of fraying ties between Kurds and Arabs.

Lawmakers from Iraq's Kurdish minority said on Saturday tens of thousands of displaced Kurds would be prevented from taking part in elections slated for next month if electoral officials did not revise voter lists.

The appeal from Kurdish lawmakers, the second biggest bloc in Iraq's 275-member parliament, is the latest sign of fraying ties between Kurds and Arabs in ethnically and religiously mixed Nineveh province, which is one of Iraq's most violent areas.

It also reflects fears of losing power among Kurds in Nineveh, where they are just a quarter of the population but control local government after the last provincial vote was boycotted by Sunni Arabs, who are in the majority there.

"The Kurdish Alliance demands that the Electoral Commission find a solution to this issue and allow these people to exercise their constitutional right to vote," the bloc said in a statement read by Abdel Muhsin al-Sadoun, a Kurdish deputy.

The bloc asked the commission to review voter lists to let more than 125,000 people it said had fled northern Nineveh province for the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan return and take part in the vote, which is scheduled for Jan. 31.

The provincial elections are expected to reshape Iraqi politics as violence subsides across the country more than five years after the U.S. invasion.

Yet they are also seen as a security risk as politicians from rival religious, ethnic and party factions vie for power.

THORNY ISSUE

This week, Nineveh's Kurdish-controlled provincial council voted to try to delay the elections so displaced families could return. Diyala, another restive province, has also asked for a delay.

Federal officials said the provincial authorities had no such power and pledged the vote would take place on time.

Lawmakers representing Nineveh's Sunni Arabs and Shabaks, a religious minority, rejected any attempts to delay the vote as "unacceptable and illegal".

"We assure the people of Nineveh that the polls will take place on time without any delay," lawmaker Noor-Eldeen al-Hiyali said on behalf of eight non-Kurdish deputies from Nineveh.

Hiyali said any delay would signal an attempt to alter the balance of power in Nineveh, whose population of about 2.8 million is about 60 percent Sunni Arab and a quarter Kurdish.

A rift has grown in recent months between Iraq's central government, which includes Kurds but is led by Shi'ite Arab Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and the Kurdish government in its capital, Arbil. Oil reserves are one particularly thorny issue. Such tensions will likely flare in the lead-up to the polls.

The staggering number of displaced Iraqis is a complicating factor as Iraq heads to the polls. According to the International Organisation for Migration, the ranks of people displaced since Feb. 2006 alone reaches 1.6 million.

The United Nations mission in Iraq, which will send out observers in an effort to avoid allegations of fraud that marked past elections, says the elections should take place as planned.