BAGHDAD (AFP) — The United Nations handed over an eagerly awaited report on disputed districts of Iraq on Wednesday, in which it refused to contemplate the division of the deeply-contested oil-rich Kirkuk province.
UN special representative Staffan de Mistura gave copies to President Jalal Talibani, a Kurd, and to his Shiite and Sunni Arab deputies, as well as to Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the president of the autonomous Kurdish region Massoud Barzani, a UN statement said.
The report, which was the fruit of more than a year's work by a 15-strong team of diplomats, academics, negotiators and constitutional experts, included separate studies of 15 disputed districts, including the whole of Kirkuk province.
The UN stressed that the studies were "analytical rather than prescriptive". "The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq has not made any suggestions at this time regarding the future administrative jurisdiction of these areas," it said.
"On the other hand, recommendations on specific localised confidence building measures have been included in each assessment."
The Kurds have long striven to expand their northern autonomous region beyond its current three provinces to other areas where the population was historically Kurdish, an ambition that has been bitterly contested by the Arabs who were settled there in large numbers under Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.
In order to dilute historic Kurdish majorities, a number of provincial boundaries were also drawn up so as to include Arab populations and minority groups, further stoking ethnic tensions.
"Our strong hope in presenting these very thorough and objective reports, which analyse these highly complex disputed areas in ways that nobody has ever done before, is that the parties will use them to start a process of concrete dialogue," de Mistura said.
"We are all too aware that tensions have recently risen in parts of the disputed areas, and also that there are more issues than just the territorial ones that divide the parties," the UN envoy added.
"That is why we have done the work in the way we have, and that is why we are hoping that sustained and serious dialogue will now follow."
The UN report included a discussion paper setting out a series of options for the most contested area of all -- Kirkuk, the northern oil hub which, over Arab and Turkmen opposition, the Kurds have long fought to incorporate as the capital of their autonomous region.
The UN said its team had come up with four options for the province's future, all of which "deal with Kirkuk as a single entity."
They would all "use the constitution of Iraq as the starting point for handling Kirkuk, require a political agreement among the parties and then some form of a confirmatory referendum," it added.
The UN said it had "worked closely with various Iraqi authorities at national, regional, governorate (provincial) and local levels to try to help them develop processes which could facilitate resolution of the disputed internal boundaries."
The reports were meant to be completed last autumn but were delayed.
As well as the whole of Kirkuk province, they cover large parts of Nineveh -- the northern province, whose capital Mosul is Iraq's second city -- as well as two districts of Diyala province, and one each of Salaheddin and Sulaimaniyah provinces.
The 15 areas are the districts of Sinjar, Tal Afar, Til Kaef, Sheikhan, Akre, Hamdaniya, Makhmour, Al Hawija, Dibis, Daquq, Kirkuk, Tuz, Kifri and Khanaqin, as well as the sub-district of Mandali in Baladruz district.
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