Iraqi Kurds petition UN for independence poll

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...2/s1272667.htm

Iraqi Kurds petition UN for independence poll

More than 1.7 million Iraqi Kurds have signed a petition calling for a referendum on independence.

A Referendum Movement in Kurdistan spokesman says a delegation from their organisation has travelled to the United Nations headquarters in New York to hand over the petition.

"The signatures were collected in towns across Iraqi Kurdistan," spokesman Karwan Abdullah said.

The movement's campaign is not supported by Iraq's two main Kurdish former rebel groups - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - which have long limited their demands to autonomy within a federal constitution for fear of offending Iraq's powerful neighbours.

The independence campaigners charge that the two factions, which ran three northern provinces in defiance of Saddam Hussein before last year's US-led invasion, are unrepresentative and that most Iraqi Kurds want to break away.

Since early October, they have organised a series of rallies in Kurdish cities in a bid to prove their support.

Neighbouring Iran, Syria and Turkey all have large Kurdish minorities of their own and their governments are implacably opposed to Kurdish independence for fear it might encourage their own communities to try to secede.

Calls from the two mainstream factions for their autonomous region to be expanded to include the northern oil centre of Kirkuk and parts of two other provinces have met strong opposition from Turkey.