As part of this jockeying for influence, the prime minister of Iraq’s autonomous northern region, known as Iraqi Kurdistan, threatened secession if Iraq’s central government continues to challenge the region’s authority to sign oil contracts. The main Kurdish parties, however, have repeatedly stated their objective is autonomy within Iraq, not secession. Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd and the central leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The dispute over oil is the latest in a series of clashes with Baghdad as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) presses to extend and strengthen its autonomy.

The compromise to allow debate on establishing new autonomous regions was reached after weeks of angry exchanges, walkouts, and boycotts of sessions in parliament.

In one instance Sunni politicians objected angrily to the presentation of a map that showed the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk as part of Iraqi Kurdistan. In another, all the Kurdish members of parliament walked out after an Arab politician asserted that Kurds are only 4 percent of Mosul, another oil-rich city in dispute.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the dominant party in the faction of wealthy Shiites in the government, is pressing to form an autonomous region in the predominantly Shiite and oil-rich south. Wealthy Sunnis fear that with the KRG in the north and a Shiite-led government in the south they would be cut off from much of their access to the country’s oil revenues.

There is also opposition among some forces within the Shiite bloc to moving too rapidly to set up other autonomous regions. Among them are cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Iyad Allawi, the former interim prime minister handpicked by Washington.

Al-Sadr’s militia fought fierce battles against U.S. troops in southern Iraq in 2004, but his movement now heads several ministries in the current U.S.-backed government.

Another object of dispute is Mosul province, which is predominantly Sunni but also has a large Kurdish population. Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of the province, is a Kurd. Half of the 30,000 soldiers in the 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Division stationed in the province are Kurds and have Kurdish commanders. They were instrumental in suppressing a Baathist-led uprising in the province aimed at aiding Baathists in Fallujah during the U.S. ground assault there in 2004.

Goran said a referendum scheduled for the end of 2007 to decide what areas will be incorporated into the KRG could result in the inclusion of most of Mosul province together with the former Baathist stronghold of Tal Afar.

Iraqi oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani told al-Sabaah newspaper that he was not “committed to oil investment contracts signed in the past…by officials of the government of the Kurdistan region.”

In a sharply worded response Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish region, accused Shahristani of flouting Iraq’s constitution. He said the Iraqi charter gives regional and federal governments joint control of oil fields currently in production but gives the federal government no role at all with regard to the new oil fields.

Kurds were brutally oppressed under the Baath party regime of Saddam Hussein. They have administered an autonomous region in northern Iraq since the first U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 1991. A bloc of Kurdish parties now holds the second largest group of seats in the Iraqi parliament.  
 
Tensions sharpen with Turkey
In an interview on National Public Radio, Talabani downplayed the possibility of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq, saying the presence of U.S. troops prevents that.

But he warned that if Iraq’s neighbors, in particular Turkey, Iran, and Syria, continued to intervene in its internal affairs, the Iraqi government might in turn support opposition forces in those countries. Two days after his remark, Iranian authorities blamed the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for blowing up a section of a natural gas line between Iran and Turkey

Ankara has accused the KRG of providing support and bases in northern Iraq to the PKK, a Maoist-led Kurdish organization that has carried on a decades-long guerrilla war against the Turkish government. Last August Turkish warplanes bombed PKK bases inside Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Reuters.  
 
 
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