Gates offers Kurds help to solve border, oil disputes

US DEFENCE secretary Robert Gates yesterday urged Iraqi Kurdish leaders to resolve their differences with Baghdad before US forces withdraw from the country at the end of 2011.

During discussions in Irbil with Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani, Mr Gates offered to help resolve disputes over oil resources and provincial boundaries which threaten to flare into full-scale civil conflict.

US commanders regard Arab-Kurdish tensions as the chief cause of instability in Iraq and fear clashes in the oil rich Kirkuk area, in particular, where 3,200 Kurdish militiamen hold a contested line against 12,000 government troops.

The Kurds are seeking to annex territory in Kirkuk and other provinces in spite of strong opposition from Shia, Sunni and Christian Arab and Turkomen residents who reject Kurdish ambitions and have the backing of the Iraqi government. Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki cannot afford to allow the Kurds to prevail or he would alienate these groups.

On the occasion of the visit of Mr Gates to Baghdad on Tuesday, Mr Maliki ordered Iraqi security forces to enter and plant a police post in a camp for 3,500 Iranian dissidents belonging to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a Muslim leftist organisation which helped oust the shah in 1979.

Six Iranians and two policemen were killed when the Iraqis stormed the gates of camp Ashraf, established in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

Since the 2003 US occupation of Iraq, inhabitants of the camp have been designated as protected persons under the Geneva conventions.

Although dubbed a “terrorist organisation” by Washington, the US provided protection until handing over to the Iraqis on January 1st, 2009.

By taking action while Mr Gates was in the Iraqi capital, Mr Maliki demonstrated that he is independent and Iraq is regaining its sovereignty.

During his recent visit to Washington, Mr Maliki repeatedly asserted Iraqi independence over decision-making when urged by the US to pursue reconciliation with Sunnis.

Mr Maliki is also eager to prove to Tehran that he is prepared to act against the Mujahideen, once the arch foe of Tehran’s clerical regime and still seen as an enemy. In 2002 the organisation provided the US with intelligence on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Mr Maliki has been under pressure to act from Iraqi security force elements recruited from the Shia Badr Corps militia, which is raised, trained, armed and financed by Tehran. This militia is the military wing of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, the main rival of Mr Maliki’s Dawa party.

The Islamic council is closely connected to Iran’s ruling conservative faction headed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.