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Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution
Kurdistan Democratic Alliance (KDA) – Press Release
June 8, 2008

As a result of the ill-intensions of the Iraqi government, regional interferences and the weak diplomacy of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, relating the Arabized areas of Kurdistan was postponed for a period of six months. The six months has passed without any solutions in sight. Instead, the Special Representative of the United Nations General for Iraq Staffan de Mistura presented UNAMI’s first report explaining possible methodologies to resolve the disputes surrounding the Arabized areas of Kurdistan. The UN was supposed to provide technical support to the Iraqi Government to implement article 140 of Iraqi constitution. Instead, it is legitimizing the Arabisation of Kurdistan and continues to fail dealing justly with the challenges facing the Kurdish issue.  
The UN report ignores the Iraqi constitution, in which Article 140 provides the framework to resolves the issues surrounding the Arabized areas of Kurdistan.  A constitution is the highest legal document in a country and is the basis for regulating law and order. Ignoring the constitution undermines the very fundamental legal process in Iraq and paves the way for disorder.
The report further ignores the oppression and damage inflicted on Kurds during the Arabization campaign of Saddam’s regime, and it ultimately legitimizes the ethnic-cleansing campaign of Saddam’s regime.  The confidence building measures proposed by the report are overly biased:  Since 1991, the city of Akre, which is home to a large Kurdish majority, has been administered by the KRG.  One of the confidence building measures recommended by the report emphasizes Arab language rights, as Akre was administered by the Ninewa governorate prior to 1991.  Ironically, the report completely ignores the Kurdish language rights in the city of Mosil of the Ninewa governorate, which is home to a large number of Kurds.  In short, the report provides all but a just approach to the challenges surrounding the Arabized Kurdish areas.
The United Nation as a cosmopolitan organization must be just, if it wants to retain its credibility.  Hostile states to Kurds like Iran, Turkey and 22 Arab states have representation in the UN, but the Kurdish voices remain unheard.  The UN must support the Iraqi constitution, which paves the way for the reversal of Saddam’s ethnic-cleansing campaigns against the Kurdish people in Iraq.    
The Kurdistan Democratic Alliance calls on the Kurdish people to denounce the unjust UN report submitted to the Iraqi government. It also calls on the UN to play an impartial rule in this dispute.