nsnbc : Holding their first official meeting on Friday that new United Iraqi Party voted unanimously for the party’s agenda to create a Sunni region in Iraq on par with the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in the north of the country.
Iraqi Vice President Osman Nujaifi, who is also the leader of the new United Iraqi Party said after the meeting on Friday: “We will work for a united Iraq and a Nineveh Region in which the rights of all peoples are respected. The rights of the Sunnis must be respected too. In the recent months, over 2000 Sunni Arabs have been abducted.”
Iraq’s Sunni leaders have in the past shown support for an autonomous region in Nineveh with Mosul as its capital, which they have long been championing.
Moves to assert Sunni rights and aspirations have increased in proportion to Iran’s growing influence over the federal government in Baghdad and the marked increase in the presence of Iranian “military advisers” with militia who are combating ISIS in the Nineveh region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has openly supported the formation of a Sunni region but Erbil also shown support for the return of Kurdish territories in Nineveh in case of a “Yes” vote at a future referendum which is hoped to determine the status of the contested territories outside KRG.
“We chose Erbil since most of the Mosul refugees are in Kurdistan Region, it would have been difficult to meet in Baghdad because of political and security issues that most of our members could face in the Iraqi capital,” said party official Khalid Mafraji.
In July last year, the Iraqi parliament adopted a bill which would effectively empower the provincial capitals in the country in their relation to the central government in Baghdad and would grant them lawful means to create semi-independent regions with considerable political and administrative powers.
“The first thing now is to focus on reconstruction of Mosul which has bee devastated by the ISIS war. And when the extreme unemployment and poverty are addressed we will then move on to set up the Nineveh Region within a federal Iraq,” said party official Ali Rubaiei.
CH/L – nsnbc 13.05.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/05/13/new-united-iraqi-party-wants-to-create-sunni-region-in-nineveh/
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