ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Nouri al-Maliki, who is looking increasingly like a lame duck prime minister as Iraq threatens to fall apart, lashed out at the country’s autonomous Kurds, rejecting their move into disputed territories and a planned independence vote.
In a televised weekly speech on Wednesday Maliki vowed that the Iraqi army would return to the vast territories where the Kurds have deployed their Peshmerga forces, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk that the Kurds have always wanted as a future capital.
“There is nothing in our constitution called self-determination," Maliki said. "No one has the right to take advantage of events… as happened with some actions of the Kurdistan Region."
His speech came a day after Kurdish President Massoud Barzani told the BBC that a referendum to decide on Kurdish independence “is a question of months,”
“I cannot fix a date right now but it’s a question of months,” Barzani said, adding it was up to the Kurdish parliament to decide on the date.
“I have said many times that independence is a natural right of the people of Kurdistan. All these developments (in Iraq) reaffirm that, and from now on we will not hide that the goal of Kurdistan is independence,” he said in the interview.
The same day that Barzani’s interview was aired, MPs in Baghdad opened the new session of parliament, following elections that preceded the current turmoil. But it remained in session only until the Kurdish and Sunni blocs walked out, after the Shiites failed to come up with any name to replace the embattled prime minister.
Maliki, who squeezed himself into a second term and looks determined to shoehorn himself into a third, appears amazingly out of touch, as Iraq falls apart before a cocktail of bulldozing forces that include Sunni jihadis, an al-Qaeda offshoot, and loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s ousted military.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces moved into Kirkuk, and other disputed areas in the provinces of Nineveh and Diyala, after the Iraqi army largely collapsed when jihadi-led insurgents began a lightning offensive three weeks ago.
The fate of Kirkuk and the other disputed lands was supposed to be decided under Article 140 of the constitution, in a 2007 referendum that never took place.
Barzani said that constitutional clause was finished; Maliki said that was “unacceptable.”
“This is unacceptable and inadmissible. Article 140 has not ended, it remains constitutional,” he said. “It must proceed in accordance with the constitution.”
But Barzani said the Kurds could not wait indefinitely to decide their fate.
“We can’t go back to the previous situation. We can’t experiment with our fate for another 10 years. We can’t remain hostages to an unknown future,” he said.
Maliki warned the Kurds, saying seeking independence would plunge the region into uncontrollable turmoil.
"Oppressed Kurdish people: this (statehood) will harm you, and plunge the region into an abyss that you cannot get out.”
Meanwhile, President Barzani will address the Kurdish parliament on Thursday about the current political and security situation in Iraq. He is also expected to bring up the referendum question.
Maliki also pleaded for dialogue with the Kurds.
"When everything goes back to normal, then we sit down at the constitutional negotiating table,” he said.
