Iraqi Kurds consider autonomy

The United Nations Security Council's unanimous endorsement of Iraqi sovereignty this week has been widely hailed as marking the end of the US-led occupation and control. But history may view it as opening an Arab-Kurd ethnic fissure that will ultimately divide the nation of Iraq, say analysts.

Wednesday, the tension between Shiites and Kurds over Iraq's temporary constitution flared with Kurdish ministers threatening to walk out of the newly formed Iraqi government. The dispute over the UN resolution presents the week-old government with its first major internal crisis with three weeks to go before it assumes sovereignty.

Analysts say that the crisis is a symptom of the longer-term problem of reconciling Kurdish desires for self-determination with Arab insistence that Iraq remains whole and undivided.

"The most complicated issue facing Iraq is that of the Arabs and the Kurds," says Saadoun al-Dulame, executive director of the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies in Baghdad.

The Kurdish leadership is furious that the United States and Britain omitted a reference to the interim constitution (known as the Transitional Administrative Law or TAL) in the UN Security Council resolution on Iraqi sovereignty which was passed unanimously Tuesday.

The TAL was excluded largely at the demand of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's preeminent Shiite cleric who has had a major influence in recent months over the transition process from occupation to sovereignty.

The TAL was adopted in February by the now defunct Governing Council to serve as a temporary constitution under which Iraq will be governed until a permanent charter is drawn up by the end of next year. It grants the Kurdish districts of northern Iraq a federal status and a potential veto over the permanent constitution, thus providing some reassurances to the Kurds after decades of persecution at the hands of Arab governments in Baghdad. Kurds comprise about 15 percent of the Iraqi population.

But the absence of any written guarantee that the interim constitution will be honored has sparked fears that it will be ignored once the new Iraqi government formally takes office on June 30.

Last week, Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Jalal Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, demanded that Washington ensure the TAL is binding on the new government.

"If the TAL is abrogated, the Kurdistan Regional Government will have no choice but to refrain from participating in the central government and its institutions, not to take part in the national elections, and to bar representatives of the central government from Kurdistan," the two Kurdish leaders said in a joint letter to President Bush.

But Shiites, led by Ayatollah Sistani, have deep reservations about a document that allows a minority group veto over a permanent constitution. Comprising 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million population, the traditionally marginalized Shiite community expects to reap the reward of their superior numbers in the new Iraq.

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