On August 6, the Iraqi parliament adjourned for a five-week summer break without passing the legislation needed to hold provincial elections by the scheduled date of October 1. At the heart of the impasse were differences over the future of the northern oil-rich province of Tamim and its capital Kirkuk. In the two weeks since, the divisions have only widened.

The Kurdish nationalist parties aspire to incorporate Tamim into the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) formed out of the three northern, majority Kurdish provinces of Irbil, Dahuk and Sulaymaniyah. Their plans are opposed by a range of other Iraqi factions that do not want to see the KRG assert any rights over the country's northern oilfields, which produce 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports.

Both sides employ communal agitation to conceal the fact that the essential conflict is over the control of territory and resources. The Kurdish nationalists insist that Kirkuk is the "Jerusalem" or historic capital of the Kurdish people. They claim that it has a majority Kurdish population who, if given the right to vote on the matter, would elect to join with the KRG.

Their opponents insist that the large Turkomen, Arab, Assyrian and Chaldean Christian minorities in the city would face discrimination and even persecution within a Kurdish-defined state. Turkomen nationalists, descendents of Turkic people who moved into what is now northern Iraq centuries ago, go further and claim that the city is as much Turkomen as Kurdish.

The underlying tensions are made more complicated by the recent history of Kirkuk. In response to a series of Kurdish separatist rebellions against the Iraqi state, the former Baathist regime began a program of ethnic cleansing in Tamim province in 1975. Several hundred thousand Kurds, Turkomen and Christians were forced to leave and tens of thousands of Arabs were settled in Kirkuk in an attempt to alter the city's demographics.

The policies implemented after May 2003 under the US occupation guaranteed that ethnic conflicts would erupt. The Bush administration consciously favoured the Kurdish nationalist leadership, in reward for its support for the US invasion. The Kurdish claim over Kirkuk was recognised in Article 58 of the so-called Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)--an interim constitution largely written by US State Department officials. The TAL stipulated a policy of reverse ethnic cleansing--evicting Arab settlers and returning Kurds--that was bound to inflame tensions.

The TAL edicts were incorporated into Article 140 of the new Iraqi constitution, which was put to a referendum in October 2005. Article 140 stated that the population movements and a new census had to be completed by December 2007 and a referendum held in Tamim province on joining the KRG. It also included a clause that gave regions, not the federal government in Baghdad, full authority over all new oil and gas fields within their borders. This positioned the Kurdish nationalists to lay claim to the revenues of untapped fields in Tamim and the other KRG provinces.

An election law that was tabled in the Iraqi parliament on July 22 attempted to curb Kurdish ambitions by giving Turkomen and Arabs a permanent majority in the Tamim provincial government. It stipulated ethnic quotas, with 32 percent of members Kurdish, 32 percent Turkomen, 32 percent Arab and 4 percent Christian. It also decreed that the large Kurdish peshmerga militia in Kirkuk had to be withdrawn and replaced with troops from the "south and centre", i.e., Arab troops.

The 58-strong Kurdish bloc in the 225-seat parliament stormed out in protest, as did members of their main Shiite fundamentalist ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). ISCI has ambitions to form its own regional bloc in the country's oil-rich southern provinces, where Shiites form the majority of the population. Any undermining of the KRG's position under the constitution could potentially threaten ISCI's plans.

The remaining 140 legislators voted regardless, passing the measure by 127 votes to 13. Within 24 hours, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and one of the two vice-presidents, Adel Abdul Mahdi, from ISCI, used their powers to veto the legislation.

Rising tensions

On July 29, bloody clashes broke out in Kirkuk between Kurds and Turkomen after a suicide bombing targeted a Kurdish demonstration against the parliament's actions. The violence left dozens dead and wounded.

UN mediators proposed a compromise to defuse the rising tensions. They recommended postponing elections in Tamim but made reference to the need to prepare to hold a referendum on the province's status vis-