Barzani says Iraqi Kurds expected greater US support in Kirkuk issue

Masoud Barzani, who heads the largely autonomous Kurdish regional administration in northern Iraq, said Washington had failed to give strong support to a Iraqi Kurdish-backed plan in the country's 2005 constitution for settling the fate of Kirkuk, a disputed province with vast oil wealth.Â

"We have had a historic and friendly relationship, but frankly speaking, we were expecting more," Barzani told Reuters.

"They could have played a much larger role in solving this problem than they did," he said.

Tensions have risen in Kirkuk, which sits on as much as 4 percent of the world's oil, as Iraqi Kurdish leaders seek to incorporate it into their administration. The ancient city, which was once a part of Ottoman Empire, has been the scene of repeated violence in recent months.

Iraqi Kurds demand implementation of Article 140, which calls for several steps to address the dispute over Kirkuk from the population mix of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, including the holding of a referendum.

The deadline for such steps has long since passed, and Turkmen and Arabs, who say that the Arbil administration has sent hundreds of thousands of Kurds to Kirkuk to tip the ethnic scale, claim the blueprint is now obsolete. Kurds deny those charges. 

The United Nations has offered a proposal for compromise plans with the hope of helping end decades of deadlock over the city.

The report contained four options to overcome disputes over control of Kirkuk and recommendations on 14 other contested areas in northern Iraq. The options, all of which treat the province as a single unit, have not been made public.