BAGHDAD — The United Nations said Wednesday it would present a list of proposals to resolve the conflict over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed regions in northern Iraq.
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nation’s special representative for Iraq, said that its assistance mission for Iraq would present proposals by the end of October. The objective, he said, was “a grand deal” among the Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Yazidis, and other groups now passionately pressing their claims in the area.
The proposals will reflect months of research by a diverse team of 15 lawyers, negotiators, academics, diplomats and historians, some with experience in Bosnia, Israel and the Palestinian territories. They will center on Kirkuk, “the hottest issue in Iraq these days,” Mr. de Mistura said.
Mr. de Mistura and other United Nations officials refused to say whether the recommendations would involve shifting populations from one place to another or redrawing provincial and regional boundaries, because the disputes have aroused too many passions among the competing ethnic and sectarian groups.
Who controls Kirkuk is likely to prove most difficult to resolve. A referendum to decide that question missed a constitutionally mandated deadline last Dec. 31, and there appears to be little immediate prospect of holding such a vote. Indeed, the disputing parties in Kirkuk have failed even to complete the preliminary stages of stabilizing the area and counting those eligible to vote.
One possibility, Mr. de Mistura said, is that instead of relying on a referendum to decide the city’s future, all the parties might reach a political compromise that would then be “confirmed” in a referendum of the respective groups of people.
“Our aim is to come up with options which, if all Iraqi parties work effectively on them, could provide a peaceful, political, long-lasting solution which eventually one day, not necessarily now, may be confirmed or sanctioned through a confirmatory referendum,” Mr. de Mistura said. “But we need a deal first, based on our options or any reasonable options that they may come up with.”
As an initial step in June, the United Nations mission presented a report to Iraq’s Presidency Council on four areas: Akra, Hamdaniya, Mahmour and Mandali. These are regarded as among the least vexing of more than a dozen disputed regions in the north. (Others include Tal Afar, Sinjar, Khanaqin and Kifri.) Peter Bartu, a senior political adviser to Mr. de Mistura, said, however, that “there have been no easy places.”
Mr. Bartu said his team had searched Iraqi archives to ascertain the history of each area, examining hundreds of administrative decrees by successive Iraqi governments since 1932.
Meanwhile Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday, in the footsteps of King Abdullah II of Jordan, who earlier this month became the first Arab leader to visit Iraq since the American-led 2003 invasion.
Mr. Siniora appeared with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki at a news conference about an agreement to export oil to Lebanon. Iraqi oil was also prominent on King Abdullah’s agenda.
