ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Controversial Iraqi Sunni politician Mishan al-Juburi, who has accused the Kurds of trying to take over Kirkuk, declared he will be running in next year’s parliamentary elections and is organizing Arabs in the disputed province to rally behind him.
“I am working on organizing the Arabs of Kirkuk in a major bloc to run for the parliamentary elections," Juburi told Rudaw.
Juburi, who spends most of his time in Syria, said that Iraq's political and election system have been commercialized, therefore "I am not going to represent any group or bloc in the elections."
Juburi, who had led the Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc in the Iraqi parliament, fell out with Iraq’s Shiite leaders and left for Syria where he set up several satellite TV stations that broadcast anti-American programs blasting the US presence in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
Juburi said he would not ally with any Sunni groups, especially that of parliamentary speaker Osama Nujeifi. “I will not become an ally of Nujeifi's bloc because he is a partner of the Kurdish bloc and therefore has lost our trust," he said.
Following his return to Iraq, in TV appearances Juburi accused leaders of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of trying to take over resource-rich and multi-ethnic Kirkuk. Large parts of the province lay in swaths of “disputed territories” that are claimed both by Iraq’s Kurds and the Shiite central government in Baghdad.
Iraqi law says that parliamentary elections must be held by April 30, 2014, but the flawed election law itself is still stuck in parliament without a consensus for changes to it.
