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August 30th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : The Foreign Ministry of Iran, on Wednesday, warned officials from Iraq’s Kirkuk province that Tehran views the decision to have the province participate in the referendum on the independence of Iraq’s Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR), scheduled for September 25, as a provocative and dangerous move.
Continuing Tehran’s interference into Iraq’s and the Kurdistan Autonomous Region’s domestic affairs, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said: “The approval of Kirkuk’s provincial council to take part in the referendum for the separation of the Iraqi Kurdistan from the Central government in Iraq which has been rejected by the UN and many regional and trans-regional states is a dangerous and provocative move which won’t be helpful to the recent talks in Baghdad to resolve the mutual issues and will have an impact on Iraq’s potentials and national power on the path of establishing the country’s victories against terrorism.”
He added that: “The Islamic Republic of Iran warns against this wrong decision which clearly violates Iraq’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and reiterates that commitment of all parties to the Constitution and resolving the differences in the country through talks and legal solutions is the best option for the Iraqi nation and any action leading to fresh crises in the region and at Iraq’s borders with its neighbors is not tolerated.”
On Tuesday a total of 22 members of Kirkuk Provincial Council voted in favor of Kirkuk’s involvement in the referendum. The session was boycotted by Turkmen and Arab members, Kirkuk’s provincial council who thus forfeited their mandate. However, Saad al-Hadith, the spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, denounced on Tuesday a decision to include Kirkuk in the Kurdish independence referendum, calling the move “illegal and unconstitutional”.
Hassan Toran, an Iraqi MP and a leader of the Turkmen Front, described the decision by the provincial as “dangerous”. Also, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi denounced as “wrong” the decision of the Kirkuk Provincial Council to participate in the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum. Al-Abadi, during a news conference on Tuesday, claimed that the referendum scheduled for September 25 is “unconstitutional and has no value”.
The Kurdistan Autonomous Region’s political parties, not including Gorran (Change) Movement and the Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG), came to an agreement on June 7 to hold a referendum on the region’s independence on September 25, 2017. The oil rich Kirkuk city in Iraq’s north is claimed by both Iraq’s central government and the country’s Kurdish region.
The Kurds are seeking to integrate Kirkuk province into the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region claiming it to be historically a Kurdish city, but Iraq’s central government opposes this. The population is a mix of Kurds, Arabs, Christians and Turkmen. The majority of Arabs and Turkmen there do not want to see the province under permanent Kurdish control – which by no means implies that they would prefer to see the region under permanent control of a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government that is becoming increasingly dependent on the Islamist government in Tehran.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces took full control of Kirkuk after the Islamic State insurgency in Iraq in 2014 and the withdrawal of Iraqi army form the province and some other northern region of the state, including second-biggest city of Mosul.
CH/L – nsnbc 30.08.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/08/30/iran-warns-officials-in-kirkuk-over-decision-to-join-kurdistan-independence-referendum/
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