BAGHDAD, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Minister of Planning Nouri Sabah al-Dulaimi said the ministry has begun preparations for the general population census scheduled for 2020, an official Iraqi newspaper said on Monday.
"The Ministry of Planning has started its technical procedures ahead of the general population census scheduled for 2020, as the ministry formed a high commission for census, which will be chaired by the minister himself to run the census," the state-run al-Sabah newspaper quoted al-Dulaimi as saying.
Al-Dulaimi said that he will soon visit Egypt "to learn from its experience," and his ministry is determined to conduct the census as scheduled next year in all Iraqi provinces, including the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north of the country, according to the newspaper.
On March 6, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi chaired a meeting with the Supreme Council for Population, as was attended by officials, including the ministers of finance, planning and migration and displacement, in addition to the planning minister of Kurdistan region.
During the meeting Abdul Mahdi said "the census is an important step that deserves great attention and preparations at the highest level and cooperation among all to achieve the desired success."
The last census was held in 1997 in Iraq except for Kurdistan's three provinces of Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Duhok.
After 2003, the population census in Iraq has been hampered for political reasons amid intense disagreements between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government.
The ethnic Kurds consider the northern oil-rich province of Kirkuk and parts of Nineveh, Diyala and Salahudin provinces as disputed areas and want them to be incorporated into their region, a move fiercely opposed by the Arabs, Turkomans and the Baghdad government.
The article 140 of Iraq's 2005 constitution calls for several steps to address the dispute over the ethically-mixed disputed areas, including census and referendum.
However, problems emerged among the conflicting ethnicities, as Arabs and Turkomans accuse the Kurds of carrying out demographic change in the disputed areas, mainly in Kirkuk province, during the years after 2003.
While the Kurds, on the other hand, are accusing Saddam Hussein's regime of displacing thousands of Kurds who were replaced with Arabs to make Kirkuk a predominantly Arab province in 1980s.
