Iraqi Kurdistan Capital Arbil

"LandepNews"

Iraqi Kurdistan Capital Arbil

Iraqi deputy prime minister Hussain al-Shahristani on Monday demanded in a press conference that the Iraqi fugitive Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashemi be surrendered by Qatari authorities to stay on trial under terror charges. The move, that is expected to strain the ties between Iraq’s Shiite government and the Sunni countries in the Arab world, was called by the deputy prime minister of Iraq “unacceptable.”

Hashemi arrived in Qatar from the Kurdish region in Iraq, where he ran in order to avoid an arrest warrant issued in his name in December. Iraqi government accused Hashemi of running death squads against Shiite pilgrims, government officials and security forces. Hashemi says that he is innocent and that the accusations are political fabrications.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, Hashemi was totally out of reach of the central government, because the province has its own security forces. Kurdistan refused more than one requests to surrender him to Baghdad.

Iraqi interior minister demanded last month that the Kurdish leaders arrest Hashemi before he could flee the country. The refusal of the Kurdish authorities to turn him to the central authorities is a point of contention between the central government and the oil-rich province.

The deputy prime minister lashed out at the Kurdish authorities, saying that their refusal to serve an arrest warrant which is legally binding nationwide was a clear defiance of the law of Iraq.

In a statement from Hashemi’s office it is said that the vice president of Iraq and the Sunni monarchies in the Persian Gulf. Qatar has criticized the marginalization of the Sunni Iraqis. Qatar and the other monarchies in the Middle East are also irritated by the powerful ties between al-Maliki’s Shiite government and Iran, which is an economic competitor on the oil market and a supporter of the Shiite Islam.

Iran is also a supporter of the regime in Syria, whose leadership belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of the Shiite Islam. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that have supported the idea of arming the Syrian rebels in order to topple Bashar al-Assad and free the Sunni majority in Syria from the Alawite rule.

The divide between the Shiite Iraqi government and the Sunni Gulf monarchies was made clear during the Arab League summit in Baghdad, Iraq, on which occasion Iraq wanted to demonstrate its return to the international arena.

The Gulf monarchies Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates snubbed Iraq by sending lower-level officials in the place of the leaders.

The conflict between Iraq and the regional government of Kurdistan sharpened and gained momentum as the regional government ceased its exports of oil to the central government, drawing bitter criticism from Baghdad.

According to an agreement between Arbil and Baghdad the Kurds must export its oil to the central government in Baghdad, which is selling it and then returns half of the revenue to the Kurdish authorities.

The Kurdish officials accuse the government in Baghdad for not having paid the revenues since May 2011. The Ministry of Natural Resources said that Kurdistan “reluctantly” stopped the delivery of oil until further notice. The region used to ship some 50,000 barrels per day to Baghdad.

Iraqi minister of finance said last week that Baghdad has approved the payment of $560 million to Kurdistan. He added that a final audit was pending. The vice president Shahristani said that Kurdistan has been holding back on its oil output instead of delivering it all to the central government as the agreement demanded.

He said that they smuggle oil into Iran and Turkey, and urged both countries to monitor their borders so that this kind of smuggling be prevented. He added that the Iraqi oil must go through two legal pipelines only, via Basra and the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The vice president said that the withholding of the oil exports by Kurdistan is going to cause a budget deficit of the Iraqi central government. He said that Iraq has lost some $3.5 billion in 2011 because of the oil produced in Kurdistan and never delivered to Iraq.

Another source of dispute with Kurdistan sparked last November over the oil exploration deal with Exxon Mobil. In spite of its problems with the Kurdish region, Iraq is reporting its highest exports since 1989, with 2.3 million barrels a day.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been an autonomous region inside Iraq since the 1970s, when the first agreement was signed by the regime in Baghdad and the Kurdish officials. In 2005, following the second war on Iraq of the American-led coalition, a new constitution was drafted and the region of Kurdistan was defined as a federal entity of Iraq, with the Arabic and Kurdish as Iraq’s languages.

The country is a parliamentary democracy with an elected parliament and president. The region has representation in the central government and has even the president of the republic, Jalal Talabani. The region has a degree of oversight and is allowed to have foreign relations to some degree. There are many consulates, embassies and trade offices in the capital of the region.

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