ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s parliament on Saturday postponed vote on the bill regarding Halabja’s accession to a province once more, with parliament speaker asking for a new map of the province on the basis that the current proposed map is old.
“The postponement of the vote on Halabja’s ascension to a province has a legal reason,” Sozan Mansoor, member of the Iraqi parliament told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir, “Halabja’s map is old and it has changed now.”
Kurdo Omar, deputy head of the regions and provinces committee in the Iraqi parliament told Rudaw that during the meeting, parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi asked for a new map of the administrative borders of the Halabja province to be sent by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
With Saturday’s decision the parliament effectively postponed the vote on the bill regarding Halabja's ascension to a province for the fourth time since September 18.
The Iraqi cabinet in March approved a bill to make Halabja a province, in recognition of the 35th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s brutal chemical attack against the city. For the decision to be finalized, the Iraqi legislature needs to pass the bill through a vote.
The KRG has sent the new map ahead of Saturday’s session according to MP Dara Sekanyani, who said that “Maybe the postponement was related to the internal atmosphere of the parliament, even if the poll took place, the bill would not have gathered enough votes.”
Rudaw understands that Shiite blocs in the Iraqi parliament want to ascend the town of Tal Afar to a separate province from Nineveh, while Sunni blocs have issued similar demands for Fallujah in Anbar province.
“There are other areas, especially Tal Afar in Nineveh province, that could be separated and become an independent province, and we are calling for a vote on it for various reasons,” Moein al-Kadhimi, MP of the Fatah alliance in the Iraqi parliament, told Rudaw’s Ziad Ismail earlier this month.
The Kurdistan Region’s Council of Ministers in 2014 issued a decision to turn Halabja into a province, making it the fourth province in the Region. Four years later, the Iraqi interior ministry recognized it as a province.
Halabja used to be a city within Sulaimani province. Some residents have complained that not much has changed since its status has been changed to province by the KRG.
The province has a population of 120,000 and it consists of four subdistricts: Khurmal, Biyara, Bamo, and Sirwan. It is also a tourist destination.
Earlier this year, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani told Rudaw in a press conference that his cabinet is “serious” about recognizing the Kurdish city of Halabja as a province.
During the tenure of former premier Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi cabinet approved a bill to make Halabja the country’s 19th province in December 2013. Nonetheless, the deterioration of Erbil-Baghdad relations that followed that followed soon after and disagreements between the Sunni and Shiite blocs of the parliament prevented the legislature from officially passing the bill.
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