There are approximately 3 million Kurds living in Iraq. 1.7 million of them have signed a petition requesting independence, which was handed to the UN Wednesday, December 22.
A Referendum Movement in Kurdistan spokesman says a delegation from their organisation has travelled to the United Nations headquarters in New York to hand over the petition.
“The signatures were collected in towns across Iraqi Kurdistan,” spokesman Karwan Abdullah said.
The movement’s campaign is not supported by Iraq’s two main Kurdish former rebel groups – the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan – which have long limited their demands to autonomy within a federal constitution for fear of offending Iraq’s powerful neighbours.
The independence campaigners charge that the two factions, which ran three northern provinces in defiance of Saddam Hussein before last year’s US-led invasion, are unrepresentative and that most Iraqi Kurds want to break away.
Since early October, they have organised a series of rallies in Kurdish cities in a bid to prove their support.
Emphasis mine.