BAGHDAD, Aug 6: Iraqi Kurds on Saturday rejected suggestions the country should be proclaimed an Islamic state as the northern region’s autonomous parliament debated the country’s draft constitution ahead of a national conference on the issue on Sunday.

Masood Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan, said the Kurds would not compromise on their demands that include a federal Iraq and the incorporation of the northern oil centre of Kirkuk in their autonomous region.

“We will not accept that Iraq’s identity is Islamic,” Mr Barzani told an emergency session of the autonomous Kurdistan parliament.

He also rejected suggestions that Iraq be termed an Arab nation. “Let Arab Iraq be part of the Arab nation — we are not,” the Kurdish leader said. Mr Barzani, one of the leaders of the 4.5 million Kurds in Iraq, will take part in a national conference of top leaders on Sunday in Baghdad in a bid to break the deadlock on agreeing to a new draft constitution.

“This is a golden chance for Kurds and Kurdistan — if we don’t do what is important for Kurdistan, there will be no second chance. We will not make our final decision in Baghdad, the Kurdish parliament will decide,” he said.

The Kurds want a constitution that will guarantee federalism and preserve their region’s autonomy.

Mr Barzani also insisted his region would retain its Peshmerga militias, despite calls by Baghdad that they be incorporated in the national army. The emergency meeting of the Kurdish parliament prompted a two-day postponement of the national conference to break the constitutional deadlock.

The deadlock revolves around federalism, what the official languages of the new Iraq will be, the relation between religion and state, the rights of women and the future of Kirkuk.

“We are worried about comments from some on the committee,” said the regional parliament’s speaker, Adnan Mufti, who is also a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the former rebel group of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Mr Mufti said the Kurds were ready to endorse the charter ‘if all parties understand a constitution should be based on rights for all Iraqis’.

He added: “There is no way to have a unified Iraq without federalism.”

Many leaders of Iraq’s Arab majority — both Shia and Sunni — have voiced concern that federalism could open the way to secession, although the Kurds insist it is the best way of preventing the break-up of Iraq.

Kurdish hopes of a federal structure for Iraq were boosted on Friday after Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani gave a favourable response to the idea during a meeting with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.—AFP