Iraqi Kurdish leaders voiced dissatisfaction and concern over a new report by an U.N. official who has called for a phased solution to the Kirkuk issue where Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs are to run the province through a power sharing arrangement.
The Iraqi leaders met in Salahaddin near Erbil to discuss a report prepared by Steffan de Mistura who has offered a solution to the Kirkuk dispute as the United Nations has taken an initiative to delay a referendum demanded by the Kurds for the future of Kirkuk.
A referendum was supposed to be held in January 2007 but the U.N. convinced the Kurds to delay it until June 2008 as the conditions for such a referendum had nopt been created.
The Iraqi constitution stipulated that a referendum should be held after Kurds and Turkmen evicted from Kirkuk by Saddam return to their homes, Arabs brought in by Saddam are sent back to their original dwellings and a census is held.
The Iraqi Kurds claim Kirkuk belongs to the Kurds and say it should be a part of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region which includes the Erbil. Duhok and Suleimania provinces. The Kurds say Kirkuk and some parts of Mosul should be given to the Kurds.
Shiite and Sunni Arabs have joined forces to keep Kirkuk under the rule of the central government and have thus been instrumental in the delay of the referendum. They say the article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is dead as the referendum was not held last January.
There were some hopes among the Kurds that the U.N. report prepared by de Mistura would give them the eventual control of Kirkuk. However, now they have voiced disappointment.
After the Iraqi Kurdish leaders held their Kirkuk summit they voiced opposition to the di Mistura report.

A joint statement by the Kurdistan Regional Government leadership said with the participation of Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani, a broad-based meeting was held in Salahaddin on June 9, 2008, to discuss Steffan de Mistura's first phase of the report for resolving the issue of the disputed areas. The meeting was attended by the three presidencies of the Kurdistan Region (Presidency of the Kurdistan Region, Presidency of the Kurdistan National Assembly and the Presidency of the Kurdistan Regional Government Council of Ministers) as well as the Council of Kurdistan Political Parties.
The Iraqi leaders said they had studied the report and stressed the following points were identified as sources of concern that should be addressed:
1- The participants expressed their disappointment with the recommendations of the report and stated that the report, in its current form, was far from what had been anticipated. For this reason, this report cannot be a basis to rely on for resolving the issues.
2- Most of the implementation mechanisms mentioned in the report are not close to those agreed to previously for resolving the issues.
3- The report has ignored the crux of the Iraqi Constitution and its call to implement Article 140.
4- de Mistura's committee has been more preoccupied with irrelevant activities, instead of working on resolving the basic problems. It has allocated a large part of the report to some issues which are not the concern of the Committee.
The participants unanimously expressed their dissatisfaction with de Mistura's report and described it as negative. They decided to prepare a formal memorandum to de Mistura, which will identify the report’s shortcomings and will convey the Kurdistan Region’s demands. It will also insist that a committee from the Kurdistan Region hold negotiations with the UN Representative in Iraq.
At the end of the meeting, the participants called for these concerns to be taken into consideration to address the mistakes and shortcomings in the report. This first report should not be used as a basis for any future steps.