By Xinhua,
Baghdad : An Iraqi Sunni Arab political group denied on Wednesday that it has supported the Kurds over debate of a power-sharing law in the northern oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
“It is not true that we have supported the Kurds about the debate over Kirkuk issue,” Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the People of Iraq Congress, which is part of the major Sunni Accordance bloc in the Iraqi parliament.
Dulaimi was responding to remarks made a day earlier by deputy speaker Khalid al-Attiyah and Shiite lawmaker Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer.
They said parliamentary political blocs could not reach an agreement on a controversial provincial election bill, noting that the Dulaimi group and the Iraqi Islamic Party, headed by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, were backing the Kurds in their struggle to annex Kirkuk to their northern autonomous region.
Dulaimi said his group supported the article 24 of the provincial election law during the vote on the election bill on July 22. The article 24 stipulated that the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens should rule the disputed province of Kirkuk equally.
Meanwhile, Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman of the Iraqi Islamic Party, also said his party did not take side with the Kurds or any other side in the debate over Kirkuk.
“It is not true that the Islamic party took side with any party over the debate of the controversial bill of provincial election,” Jubouri said, confirming that his party is keen that all parties would solve the Kirkuk problem by consensus.
On July 22, the Iraqi parliament approved the law despite the fact that the Kurds walked out protesting a secret vote exclusively held over the article 24 which deals with the disputed oil-rich Kirkuk.