Vote Stirs Ethnic Rivalries in Kirkuk

Militants kidnapped a local Kurdish politician two weeks ago, and seven Kurdish refugees were slain in a Sunni Arab neighborhood late last month. Last week, gunmen sprayed the main Turkmen political party headquarters with bullets. Campaign posters for the leading Arab slate have been torn down or crossed out with black paint.

On Saturday, a mortar round landed near the Kurdistan parliament building in Irbil shortly after leaders debated whether to boycott the Kirkuk local election.

"If this continues, we are headed for a civil war," said Riad Sari Kehya, the political chief of the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Kirkuk.

Since the invasion of Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi leaders have feared that Kirkuk, with its evenly divided population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, was the most likely place for sectarian violence to erupt. To everyone's surprise, the city, capital of Kirkuk province, remained relatively calm even as insurgent attacks rocked other towns.

Now, the Jan. 30 vote is testing the groups' fragile coexistence.

Tensions escalated in recent weeks as Kurds began pushing to postpone local elections, saying any decision on the fate of the disputed province must wait until the return of tens of thousands of Kurds displaced during an ethnic cleansing campaign by Saddam Hussein.

"Saddam Hussein expelled the real citizens of Kirkuk," said Gov. Abdulrahman Mustafa. "We can't have elections until this is resolved."

On Saturday, the Kurdistan parliament reached a tentative deal to participate in the vote, pending the registration of an additional 100,000 Kurdish voters.

Along with a 275-member transitional national assembly, Iraqis in each of the nation's 18 provinces will choose regional councils. In addition, the three Kurdish provinces in the north are to elect a Kurdish parliament.

But now Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arab leaders are threatening to pull out. They accuse Kurds, who currently hold most of the seats of power in the province, of attempting to steal the election.

All three groups claim to represent the majority of residents in the province.

"This is the Jerusalem of Iraq," said Col. Lloyd Miles, the U.S. Army commander in charge of the province.