Agencies

Iraq’s Kurds lashed out at the country’s UN envoy on Sunday, accusing him of delaying a report on disputed areas and favouring the “Arabisation” policies of former president Saddam Hussein.

The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq accused UN envoy Staffan de Mistura of dragging his feet on issuing a report on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds would like to add to their autonomous region.

“We are near the end of 2008 and the UN envoy has yet to put forth his recommendations,” the ministry of affairs for territories outside Kurdistan said in a statement.

“He has no vision or clarity about how to achieve the implementation of Article 140,” the statement added, referring to an article in the constitution that calls for the fate of Kirkuk to be decided by popular referendum.

In August, De Mistura said he would issue a package of recommendations in September or October to cover eight areas disputed by the Kurds and Iraq’s central government, after issuing a report on four such regions in June.

But the Kurds slammed the first report, saying it “was aimed at implanting the policy of Arabisation applied by the previous chauvinistic regimes”, referring to Saddam’s policy in the 1980s of forcibly displacing Kurds and encouraging Arabs to move into the disputed areas.

De Mistura declined to address the charges directly.

“I don’t want to enter into polemics with the Kurdish leaders, but I decided to postpone until next year the announcement of my proposal to avoid creating tensions before the provincial elections” on January 31, he told AFP.

Representatives from Kirkuk’s Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen communities plan to begin meeting next year under UN auspices to try to find a way to organise elections in the city and to partition the seats among the communities.

Iraq’s parliament has proposed evenly dividing powers in the local parliament between the three groups, but the Kurds bitterly oppose the plan, pointing to their superior numbers.

Under the Iraqi constitution, a referendum was to have been held by December last year, but Kurdish leaders agreed to a six-month postponement of the vote at the recommendation of the United Nations. The vote has still not been held.

Journalists’ car bombed

US broadcaster NPR said some of its journalists have escaped injury when a bomb exploded in their car as it was parked along a street in west Baghdad.

NPR’s foreign editor Loren Jenkins said the journalists left their vehicle Sunday to interview people inside a restaurant.

Iraqi soldiers ran up and warned them that a bomb had been placed in their car while they were inside the restaurant.

Moments later, the vehicle exploded in flames. No one was injured.

NPR said on its website that Iraqi soldiers arrested a shopkeeper from a store next door.

Use of “sticky bombs” attached to cars, buses and trucks has become increasingly common in Baghdad since increased security has made it difficult for extremists to use truck bombs.

Meanwhile on Sunday, an Iraqi court ordered the release of a freelance photographer working for Reuters news agency who has been held by US forces since early September.

The Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled there was no evidence against Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, and ordered that the US military release him from Camp Cropper prison near Baghdad airport.

Iraqi prosecutors acknowledged in remarks included in the court ruling that there was a lack of evidence, and said they were closing the case against Jassam. A copy of the court order was supplied to a lawyer working for Reuters.

There was no immediate response from the US military to the ruling.