This Land is My Land

What, exactly, they’re waiting for is at the heart of a high-stakes tug of war that is ratcheting up tensions in advance of a 2007 referendum here-a constitutionally mandated vote that will determine whether or not Kirkuk becomes part of the Kurdish regional government to the north. The prize is a diverse land that is big money for the rest of the country: Kirkuk’s oil fields are the largest and potentially most productive in the country, accounting for close to half of Iraq’s oil exports and roughly 6 percent of all Mideast oil reserves.

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