Hundreds of Sunni Arabs opposed to the presence of Kurdish troops in disputed areas of northern Iraq demonstrated yesterday against a United States (US) proposal to deploy a mixed force of American, Kurdish and Iraqi soldiers in the area.
More than 300 people in the Sunni-dominated town of Hawija, once an insurgent stronghold, gathered in a stadium to protest the inclusion of Kurdish troops in these patrols.
The demonstrators and critics elsewhere in Iraq have also denounced the plan as a violation of a security pact under which the US pulled its troops back from populated areas in June.
The split between Iraq's majority Arabs and the Kurdish minority, which controls a semi-autonomous region in the north, is one of the most significant long-term threats to the country's stability, US and Iraqi officials say.
Sunni Arabs fear the Kurds are looking to add Arab lands to their semi-autonomous region.
The top US military commander in the country believes al-Qaida in Iraq is taking advantage of tensions between the Iraqi army and the Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, to carry out attacks on villages not guarded by either side.
To try to fill the gap, General Ray Odierno last month proposed the idea of a mixed force that would include US troops serving in an oversight role to help Kurdish and Iraqi soldiers work together to secure areas along that fault line.
The issue has come to the fore with a series of deadly bombings targeting villages outside the tense city of Mosul, where al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents remain active despite numerous US-Iraqi military operations.
Odierno said the deployment of the US-Iraqi-Kurdish protection forces would start in Ninevah province, which includes Mosul, then extend to Kirkuk and to Diyala province north of the capital.
Security pact
The plan, which would represent a departure from the security pact under which Americans pulled back from populated areas on June 30, has yet to be approved.
Odierno said a high-level meeting between Iraqi, Kurdish and US officials would be held in September, but the US military could not confirm if the meeting had occurred or provide other details about the progress of the proposal.
The demonstrators in Hawija, west of the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, held banners that called the plan a violation of the constitution and the security agreement, which took effect on January 1 and replaced the United Nations mandate for foreign forces.
Sectarian divisions
"Arabs in this and other disputed areas reject this proposal because they say it will provoke sectarian divisions among residents, and it is a violation of the constitution," said the head of Hawija's city council, Hussein al-Jubouri.
Protesters raised Iraqi flags and banners reading 'No to the division of Iraq'.
In Baghdad, a senior parliament official said Odierno's plan was still being studied and no final decision had been reached.
"There were reactions against it and we are studying these reactions in order to evaluate this plan," said Abbas al-Bayati, chairman of parliament's security committee.
"The problem is that the presence of American forces in these areas will violate the US-Iraq security pact, so to approve this plan it must be modified to conform with the pact," al-Bayati said.