At a conference held by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in the Bahraini capital of Manama on Sunday, Gonul said Kirkuk's future status carries major implications for Turkey and Iraq's other neighbors no matter who controls the city and its surrounding oilfields. He asked the Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish-led government to avoid imposing an "unrealistic" future on Kirkuk.
Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul over the weekend reiterated the Turkish capital's frustration with the Iraqi Kurdish bid for domination of northern Iraq's multiethnic and oil-rich city of Kirkuk
At a conference held by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in the Bahraini capital of Manama on Sunday, Gonul said Kirkuk's future status carries major implications for Turkey and Iraq's other neighbors no matter who controls the city and its surrounding oilfields. He asked the Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish-led government to avoid imposing an "unrealistic" future on Kirkuk.
However, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, an ethnic Kurd, warned Turkey not to meddle in "our Kirkuk."
"You speak of Kirkuk as if it were a Turkish city," Zebari told Gonul. "These are matters for Iraq to decide."
The Turkish capital is worried that Iraqi Kurds are trying to take control of Kirkuk as part of their push for an independent state on Turkey's border and has repeatedly urged power-sharing among ethnic groups in the Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk.
The city lies just south of the Kurdish autonomous region stretching across Iraq's northeast. Kurdish leaders want to annex the city. Iraq's constitution calls for a census and referendum on the issue by the end of next year.
"We hope the natural resources of Kirkuk will be used by all groups in Iraq without discrimination," Gonul told the International Institute of Strategic Studies conference in the Bahraini capital.
Bildt warns over treading on dangerous ground':
Kirkuk is an ancient city that was once part of the Ottoman Empire, with a large minority of ethnic Turkmens as well as various Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians.
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq have rallied to reverse what they claim to be the Arabization policy of Saddam Hussein, which purged Kirkuk and other oil-rich Kurdish areas and replaced Kurds with Arab settlers.
Thousands of Kurdish settlers from northern Iraq have flooded back into Kirkuk, colonizing the city's desert outskirts. Many believe the influx is a bid to change the city's ethnic balance ahead of a 2007 census and referendum to decide whether Kirkuk will be annexed to Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
The grim Iraq Study Group assessment issued in Washington last week described Kirkuk as a "powder keg" and recommends that the referendum be delayed.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt warned those favoring the partition of Iraq that they were treading on dangerous ground. "Every partition is written in blood," Bildt told the security conference in Bahrain. "The carnage we see today is only the beginning of the bloodshed we will see if there is a partition."
Gonul agreed, saying Iraq's fragmentation "will be the beginning of a disaster that will engulf the whole region."
The International Institute of Strategic Studies conference has brought together some 200 security representatives from more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq and the United States.
