IRAQ: Iraqi Kurds will only agree to a deal on the formation of a new national government if they are given control of disputed areas in the north of the country, a Kurdish leader said.
Those areas include oil-rich Kirkuk, the most ethnically diverse and hotly contested city in the country, said Mr Nechirvan Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government.
The Kurdish coalition is in a strong bargaining position after coming second in last month's election, with 25 per cent of the vote giving it 75 seats in the 275-seat national assembly.
Mr Barzani refused to throw his weight behind either Mr Iyad Allawi or Mr Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the two men seeking the post of national prime minister in the new government.
"For us it's not a matter of individuals. There are certain principles we are focusing on," he told Reuters in a telephone interview from his office in Arbil.
"[ These include] the right of the Kurdish people to recover areas which have been Arabised in the past. Whoever is ready to agree with this, the Kurds are ready to make an alliance." Mr Barzani is a prominent Kurd but does not head either of the main Kurdish parties.
His demands are a restatement of long-held Kurdish aspirations for control of Kirkuk and appear to be a tough negotiating tactic as Iraq's parties and sects compete for positions in the new government.
Thousands of Iraqi Kurds were pushed out of their homes by Saddam Hussein as part of his "Arabisation" programme, when he sought to move Arabs into Kirkuk and the surrounding area to increase his influence and change the region's ethnic make-up.
The Kurds have repeatedly said that now Saddam is gone, they want the areas back.
The Kurds could give their backing to Iraq's main Shia alliance, which will have a slim majority in the assembly but must cut a deal to secure the two-thirds majority it needs to form a government.
Or they could support the group led by interim Prime Minister Allawi, which won 40 seats in the assembly and is determined to keep their leader at the country's helm.