Arab tribes of Kirkuk say they are ready for confrontation

Around 500 Arab leaders in the Kirkuk area met yesterday in Hawija (50 km west of Kirkuk city), including leaders of the Abeed, Jabbur, and AlbouHamdan tribes, and heads of local awakening councils. Their spokesperson, Hussein Ali al-Jabburi said the Arab tribes are "in a state of readiness" (in the event the Kurdish parties persist in their threat of annexation), adding that their tribal relationships "extend to all of the cities of Iraq". The gist of the statement is reported by both AlHayat and AlQuds alArabi, the latter paper in more detail. The AlQuds reporter leads the story this way:

The crisis over the fate of Kirkuk saw further escalation yesterday, with a threat by Arab tribal leaders to use force in defense of the Arabness of the city, in response to the demand of the Kurds for annexation to Iraqi Kurdistan, and [in response to] their forces having surrounded the Arab and Turkmen districts...

The spokesman said: "[We] Arabs have a limited patience, and if we are obliged to confront, then we will do so. We do not want recourse to violence but we are ready, and we have capacity and capability that should not be underestimated."

The journalist points out that Jabburi is also head of his local Awakening. Having expressed his hope that the crisis with the Kurds would not lead to violence, he added: "We do not want violent confrontation; we are part of the political process, and we are fighters against AlQaeda and against criminals...Our concern is the dispossession of the rights of Arabs and the confirmation of the Iraqness of Kirkuk".

There isn't any further information on the actual state of affairs in Kurkuk. The rest of the AlQuds alArabi story is about the failure in Baghdad to agree on the elections law, and the adjournment of Parliament to Sept 9.

The AlHayat story reports even less, including only the gist of the statement by al-Jabburi in addition to the news about the adjournment of Parliament.

Azzaman, for its part, describes the Parliamentary adjournment as an effort to calm the situation in Kirkuk, indicating generalized fear that any any decision could be destabilizing. The Azzaman writer says the adjournment was decided on:

after the security situation in the city deteriorated to the point where it could explode at any moment, with bad security repercussions for all the cities of Iraq, particularly Mosul and Diyala.

He doesn't elaborate.