KIRKUK, Iraq, Aug 14 (AFP) - 14h04 - Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds demonstrated Sunday in Kirkuk calling for self-determination in the constitution and demanding a Kurdish identity for the northern oil hub city.The demonstrators, who organisers said numbered 1,500, also carried banners saying secularism and women's rights should be enshrined in the draft charter due to be finalised Monday.

"Kirkuk is Kurdish" and "Give us the right to self-determination" were some of the slogans written on the banners in Arabic, Kurdish and English, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

The protestors, wearing Kurdish clothes and waving their national flag, also chanted "Down with (Shiite Iraqi premier Ibrahim) Jaafari".

The demonstration, in the centre of the ethnically mixed city 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Baghdad, was a "clear message to the constitution drafting committee not to ignore Kurdish rights," one of the organisers, Sattar Mustafa, told AFP.

Mustafa accused Jaafari's government of ignoring Kurdish demands: "We need to bring displaced Kurds back to Kirkuk and drive out the Arabs who were brought in by Saddam Hussein's fascist regime," he said.

"We have struggled for our rights, we have tens of thousands of martyrs to dictatorship and we are ready to prolong our fight to get the right to self-determination," said another Kurd, Shirzad Abdel Khalek, from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party.

On Friday Iraqi leaders said the situation in Kirkuk, whose demography was altered by Saddam Hussein by expelling Kurds and replacing them with Arabs, be "normalised" by December 15 at the latest.

Normalisation could revolve around helping thousands of expelled Kurds to return to their lands which were handed to Arabs, mainly Shiites from the south, by the former Iraqi president.