Kurds fear Iraqi arms purchases2 days ago
ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) — The speaker of northern Iraq's regional parliament warned Baghdad on Monday about the purchase of high-tech US military hardware, amid concerns the weapons could be used against them.
"The Kurds demand guarantees from the countries selling weapons to Iraq that they will not be used against our people and other Iraqis," said Adnan al-Mufti in a speech to MPs in the regional capital of Arbil.
Mufti's comments followed a Wall Street Journal report last week, citing US officials, that Baghdad wanted to buy 36 advanced F-16 fighters from the United States, in a deal which could also raise the concern of regional states.
Iraq has said it plans to buy about 10 billion dollars of US military hardware, including tanks and armoured vehicles and transport aircraft.
"We want the Iraqi government to be strong and able to defend the sovereignty of the country but our concern is related to the crisis that has happened in Khanaqin," Mufti said.
He was referring to tension that flared last month between Baghdad and Kurdish leaders when Iraqi forces ordered Kurdish political parties to vacate their offices in Khanaqin, a district in the central province of Diyala.
Khanaqin, which includes a string of villages and some of Iraq's oil reserves, is home to about 175,000 people, most of them Kurdish Shiites.
During the Arabisation policies of former dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, a large number of Kurdish Shiites were displaced by force from Khanaqin. Villages came under fierce Iraqi air strikes.
Locals only started returning after the fall of Saddam in 2003.
In June 2006, the local council of Khanaqin proposed that the district be integrated into the autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.
"We are not afraid of Maliki's government, but we are afraid of future governments," said Mufti, referring to Iraq's current prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.
"We are not accusing the government unfairly, but the last event has created concerns that if a new prime minister came to power and then he thought military solution was necessary he could impose his will."
The five million Iraqi Kurds living in the mountainous northern provinces of Dohuk, Sulaimaniyah and Arbil are still recovering from the attacks carried out by Saddam in the 1980s.
The Kurds say 180,000 Kurdish villagers were killed when Saddam's forces bombed and gassed their regions during the infamous Anfal military campaign.
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http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6zWO8gXKmiH00XxJ7pVXRKnW0Pg
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