shiite muslim

Description

The Iraqi Kurdish administration, in a standoff with the Iraqi army over disputed areas, has sent troops to block the roads to the city of Kirkuk, a Kurdish official has said. The official from the Peshmerga Affairs Ministry of the Iraqi Kurdish region said the troops will not enter Kirkuk, whose control is a matter of dispute between the Kurdish administration and the Baghdad government, but that they will not allow the Iraqi army to enter the city either. The peshmerga troops were dispatched to the area on Saturday afternoon, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Anatolia news agency. The Iraqi army troops, on the other hand, are deployed some 30 kilometers from Kirkuk, Anatolia also said. The latest military buildup this year illustrates how far relations between Baghdad's central government, led by Shiite Muslim Arabs, and ethnic Kurds have deteriorated, testing Iraq's federal cohesion nearly a year after US troops left. Baghdad and Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region earlier this week began sending troops to an area over which they both claim jurisdiction, raising tensions in a long-running feud over land and oil rights. Speaking to Reuters, Anwar Haji Osman, the deputy minister for Peshmerga affairs, said on Saturday that more Kurdish troops and tanks were mobilized and headed towards the disputed areas. He said that they would hold their positions unless Iraqi forces made a move. "If they overstep the line, we will strike them," he said. The Iraqi army and Kurdish troops have previously come close to confrontation only to pull back at the last moment, flexing their muscles but lacking any real appetite for a fight. Iraq's speaker of parliament, who visited Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Friday, said "significant progress" had been made towards defusing the standoff and that a meeting between military leaders from both sides would be held on Monday in the Defense Ministry in Baghdad. Tension has been mounting over the formation of a new command center for Iraqi forces to operate in the disputed areas. Kurds say the Dijla Operations Command is a threat to them and an attempt by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to seize control over the oil rich territories along the internal border that demarcates the Kurdish region from the rest of Iraq. Maliki says the Dijla Operations Command is necessary to keep order in one of the most volatile parts of the country. Barzani on Saturday turned down an invitation from Shiite cleric and lawmaker Moqtada al-Sadr to meet with Maliki to discuss the situation. In a statement posted on the Kurdish regional government's website, Barzani's spokesman said he had refused because the matter was not personal, but rather a result of Maliki's "constant non-commitment to the constitution." The latest flare-up began one week ago when Iraqi troops went after a fuel smuggler who had taken refuge in the office of a Kurdish political party in Tuz Khurmato, 170 kilometers north of the capital, sparking a clash with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in which one passerby was killed. source : TodaysZaman magazine