Independence Landslide in Iraq Kurd Poll: Organizers--KurdishMedia.com

[Gloria]

From the new World Media Watch up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com

Looks like they've got exit polls in Kurdish Iraq!


1//KurdishMedia.com, UK 06/02/2005

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=6212



INDEPENDENCE LANDSLIDE IN IRAQ KURD POLL: ORGANIZERS



ARBIL, Iraq, Feb 6 (AFP) - 11h57 - An informal referendum on Kurdish independence conducted alongside last month’s historic Iraqi election drew nearly 99 percent support on a turnout of more than 80 percent, organizers said.

A total of 1,973,412 people, or 98.7 percent of respondents, backed secession in the poll, which has no legal weight, said Asso Kassem of the pro-independence Movement for a Referendum in Kurdistan, the group that organized the exercise.

Just 19,850 people, or 0.9 percent of respondents, voted against and 4,799 spoiled their questionnaires, he added.

Fellow organiser Shamal Huaizi said the two mainstream Kurdish factions had allowed the informal poll to go ahead in the three provinces of northern Iraq which they still administer, despite their opposition to independence for the forseeable future.

"The Kurdish security services authorised us to carry out this exercise on condition that we not do it inside polling stations," he said.

But he stressed that the poll had been conducted across Kurdish-inhabited districts, including the ethnically divided oil city of Kirkuk and parts of Diyala and Nineveh provinces to which the Kurds also lay claim.

Huaizi dismissed the concerns of the two mainstream factions that any precipitate independence move would spark intervention by Iraq’s neighbours, fearful of the impact on their own restive Kurdish minorities.

"We are acting in the interests of the Kurdish people and we will not take into account the views of those who reject its right to self-determination," he said.



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