Kirkuk petition stokes tensions
A petition campaign collecting signatures supporting a Kurdish Kirkuk has provoked Arab and Turkmen anger. In April 2009 a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), close to Kurdish groups, launched for a campaign to demonstrate that the majority of Kirkuk's residents want the city to be annexed to the autonomous Kurdish Region. The petition’s first sentence read: “We, the people of Kirkuk, the undersigned, demand the annexation of Kirkuk to the Kurdish Region." Arabs and Turkmen say that a solution to the Kirkuk’s crisis is the responsibility of the committee and not of NGOs. Ali Mahdi, a Turkmen member of the provincial council, told Niqash that the petition lacks both credibility and constitutional basis. He added that "members of the two parties [KDP and PUK] went to peoples’ houses and to government departments and used different methods to pressure people to sign the petition.”