Kirkuk delaying provincial laws, MP says

BAGHDAD, June 4 (UPI) -- A lawmaker with the Islamic Virtue Party said Wednesday the exploitation of religious symbols by parties in Kirkuk is holding back provincial council laws.

Basem Sherif said that the use of "religious symbols and mosques' platforms to promote the elections are one of the main reasons of the delay in approving the provincial council laws by the Iraqi Parliament," Voices of Iraq reported.

Terms of the provincial council laws include Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, which reverses the "Arabization" policy of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Article 140 specifies that Arabs in Kirkuk should return to southern and central Iraq while displaced residents of Kirkuk return north. Kurdish officials want Kirkuk to incorporate into Iraqi Kurdistan while Sunni and Shiite Arabs, as well as members of the Turkomen ethnic group, oppose the measure.

Meanwhile, Turkic lawmaker Fawzi Akram Tarzi of the Sadrist Movement, the party loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, praised statements by Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani welcoming all ethnic groups into the political process in Kirkuk.

"The Turkomen received Barzani's statements with great optimism, and the Turkomen leadership realized that the Kirkuk cause will not be solved without understanding as well as to take into consideration the privacy of the city," he said.

Barzani made his statements Tuesday in Dubai.