Kirkuk Iraq

The general with the easy smile has been here before. A little over a decade ago, Saddam Hussein dispatched him to this province where the oil wells belch orange flames day and night. Now another Iraqi Arab leader has sent him north, in a battle of wills over Kirkuk that has awakened the past and raised fear of new fighting in the territory that the Kurds consider their Jerusalem.

Kurdish lawmakers walked out of parliament Tuesday in protest over a vote on conditions for Iraq's provincial elections that called for ethnic groups to share power in Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that Kurds consider part of their territory. The walkout, which included shouting and accusations of a conspiracy against Kurds, appeared to reduce the chances that the elections would be held this year. There is no law setting out election procedures. U.S.

Iraq's parliament ended its summer term Wednesday without passing legislation setting up provincial elections this year, forcing the government to call an emergency session for the weekend. However, a positive outcome remains far from certain. Parliament speaker Mahmoud Mashadani said he would convene a special meeting of lawmakers Sunday to resolve the impasse over the election legislation, which will help decide the status of the oil-rich, ethnically divided city of Kirkuk. U.S.

Three Iraqi soldiers died in a roadside bombing Friday in the northern city of Kirkuk, where relations remained frayed among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens after a suicide bombing and ethnic clashes early in the week. The bomb targeted a convoy of Iraqi army vehicles, killing three soldiers and wounding two, the military said.

The struggle for the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk sabotaged another effort by Iraq's parliament to approve a law Sunday allowing crucial local elections this year, a stalemate that also raised questions about whether major Shiite and Sunni parties were deliberately stalling on sending people to the polls. Despite a meeting of senior Iraqi leaders and U.S. and U.N. officials seeking a compromise on Kirkuk, members of parliament failed even to muster a quorum for Sunday's emergency session.

American officials, regional leaders and residents are increasingly worried that this northern oil-rich city could develop into a third front in the country's civil war just as additional U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad and Al Anbar province as reinforcements for battles there. Al Qaeda-linked fighters recently have surfaced here, launching a wave of lethal attacks, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

A U.S. Army colonel danced the \o7debka \f7at a garden party in this rural village last month, hand in hand with half a dozen former Kurdish guerrillas. They were a study in contrasts: Col. Patrick Stackpole with crisp fatigues and a blond buzz cut, pistol strapped to his thigh, stomping along with swarthy \o7peshmerga\f7 fighters with thick black mustaches, baggy \o7shirwal \f7pants and Muslim prayer beads.

Militants blew up a key bridge Saturday on a highway connecting Iraq's oil-rich north to Baghdad, in what locals warned was part of a campaign to stoke ethnic unrest in the volatile melting pot. The attack about 110 miles north of Baghdad was viewed as a strike against Iraq's trade routes, which see large convoys traveling north to south.

Bombings killed at least 76 people in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Monday, police said, the worst such violence there in recent memory. Ethnic tensions have been building in Kirkuk, a city with a mixed population of Turkmens, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and Kurds, as it approaches a referendum on its future required by the Iraqi Constitution.

U.S. and Iraqi officials Tuesday announced a ban on truck traffic into Kirkuk and proposed digging a trench around the northern city, where a series of bombs killed at least 76 people a day earlier. The idea of encircling the city with a trench underscored fears that the violence in Baghdad and neighboring Diyala province will overtake the once-peaceful north as increased U.S. troop levels drive insurgents from the capital.