Shafaq News / The Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region, Masrour Barzani, issued a statement on the 52nd anniversary of the March 11 Autonomy Agreement.

The Prime Minister said in a statement, "today is the 52nd anniversary of the March 11 agreement, when the revolution of the Kurdish people, led by the National leader Mustafa Barzani, compelled the Iraqi government at the time to recognize some of the rights and demands of the people of Kurdistan."

"Today, while we commemorate this anniversary, some are still trying to deny the rights of Kurdistan's people, but will never give up on them, and we are always ready to hold a comprehensive dialogue to solve the pending differences according to the law", he concluded.

After Saddam returned to Baghdad, the KDP and the Iraqi government signed an accord that granted the Kurds autonomy within Iraq.

The parties agreed that Kurdish would be recognized as an official language and that this autonomous region would consist of three Kurdish governorates with a Kurdish majority.

A 15 point plan was agreed by Saddam Hussein and Mullah Mustafa Barzani, with the signed statement concluding, “History will bear witness that you [Kurds] did not have and will never have as sincere a brother and as dependable an ally as the Arab people.”

However, Kirkuk remained a disputed territory that continued to fall outside the purview of the 11 March agreement, which reserved judgment on the territorial extent of the Kurdish autonomous region pending a new census. As a stalling maneuver, the Iraqi government agreed that the region’s final boundaries were to depend on whether the census showed that a proven majority of Kurds resided in the disputed areas.