Sunday, August 21, 2005

"UNITY OF IRAQ"

LOCKED IN TALKS
Sunni leaders say they are resigned to the Kurds maintaining their current autonomy in the north -- though not to the Kurds extending their territory into the northern oilfields -- but said they would not tolerate an autonomous Shi'ite region.
Ethnic tensions in the northern oil city of Kirkuk spilled on to the streets on Saturday as hundreds of Arabs demonstrated against federalism -- code for Kurdish ambitions to annex Kirkuk -- and gunmen shot up the office of a Kurdish political party for the second time in a month, wounding three guards.