clipped from: www.guardian.co.uk Iraq's relative calm is threatened by a festering Arab-Kurdish conflict over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed territory that could explode into the worst sectarian war the country has suffered since the 2003 invasion, a new report says today.
The report by the International Crisis Group said the territorial dispute was blocking political progress in Iraq, contributing to the delay in passing a law on sharing oil revenue and threatening to put off critical provincial elections.
At the heart of the dispute is Kirkuk, home to 900,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, which sits on one of the country's biggest oilfields. It lies outside the northern zone run by the Kurdistan Regional Government, but is run by Kurdish peshmerga fighters and the Kurdish intelligence service, the Asaish.