- 2005/03/16- Iraq's political and ethnic rivalries have long converged on Kirkuk, the northern city that commands the country's biggest oilfields. The Kurds of northern Iraq see it as a potential seat of power, a site of emotional as well as economic significance.

Meanwhile real power, until recently, has rested with the city's Arab population, boosted by migrants from the south under Saddam Hussein's "Arabisation" programme.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: MDE 13/010/2005 (Public) - News Service No: 052 - 3 March 2005

Amnesty International is alarmed at reports that human rights defenders in Sanandaj, Iranian Kordestan, working on children and women's rights are facing threats in connection with their human rights work. It is feared that such harassment may increase towards International Women's Day on 8 March.

By Jonny Dymond - BBC News, Istanbul

The trial has started in Turkey of four policemen accused of the unlawful killing of a man and his child in the south-eastern province of Mardin.
Ahmet and Ugur Kaymaz were shot and killed in what security forces said was an anti-terrorism operation.

Radikal - By Nese Duzel
18 February 2005

- For Turkish-Kurdish equality, there is no other way than a federation. This is not division, but the sharing of power. It is the stage before an independent state. It gives the right to separate.

Tue Feb 15, 2005 08:37 AM ET
By Seb Walker
ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader positioned to become the country's next president, crowned a lifelong struggle for Kurdish rights with huge success in the country's historic Jan. 30 election.

ARBIL, Iraq, Feb 10 (AFP) - 16h16 - Kurdish leader Massud Barzani spoke out Thursday against any one of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups dominating the country's new government, following talks with interim prime minister Iyad Allawi.

STRASBOURG, Feb 8 (AFP) - 18h35 - The European Court of Human Rights Tuesday censured Turkey for violating the right to free speech of a Kurd, jailed because a book he published was considered separatist Kurdish propaganda.

"The tenor of the book was not such as to justify the applicants criminal conviction," the court ruled, according to a press release.

ANKARA - Wednesday, February 9, 2005

'My advice to all Iraqi political leaders is this: Such rhetoric would lead them nowhere. What they should do is turn their faces towards Baghdad,' says Gül

Kurdish candidate in Kirkuk wins the race for governor, news reports say


Wednesday, February 9, 2005
ANKARA - Iraqi Kurds and Shiite groups will soon launch post-election talks over sharing government posts, Iraqi interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday.

By: PETER W. GALBRAITH
The New York Times - February 1, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

"Erbil, (Southern Kurdistan) — OF all the remarkable things that happened at the Iraqi polls on Sunday, perhaps the most striking was pulled off by the Kurdish independence movement. With almost no advance notice, hundreds of Kurds erected tents at official polling places in Iraq's Kurdish areas and asked those emerging from the ballot booths to take part in an informal referendum on whether Kurdistan should be independent or part of Iraq. From what I saw, almost everyone stopped to vote in the referendum, and the tally was running 11 to 1 in favor of independence.