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Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said that new security measures are being considered to quell mounting violence in Iraq and urged an end to "foreign intervention" in his country.
"A package of measures to be enacted in the coming days is on the agenda in order to stop the blasts and the bombings," Maliki told reporters through an interpreter after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"We will not allow certain groups to be settling accounts between themselves," he said, without elaborating.
"The issue of security is one that is worrying us," he said. "We must say 'stop' to foreign intervention if we are to protect Iraq... We want to live in peace with our neighbors."
Iraq's Higher Education Minister Abed Dhiab al-Ujaili said earlier Thursday there was "no effective government" in Baghdad after dozens of staff were kidnapped from the education ministry.
In comments on efforts by the Iraqi Kurds to independently pursue oil deals in their autonomous oil-rich region in the north, Maliki said that Iraq's natural resouces belonged to all Iraqis.
"It will be unfair to deprive certain part of the people (from the resources) and let others benefit," he said.
Tensions between the Kurdish region and the rest of the country peaked recently when the Kurds began to independently pursue foreign oil deals and threatened to secede when the central government objected.
Maliki also underlined that the ethnically volatile oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds want to incorporate into their region, is an "indispensible city of Iraq."
"We will allow no citizen, regardless of ethnic origins, to be subjected to injustice... You may be confident that the problem will be resolved with reconciliation," he said.
Kirkuk's population also includes Arabs and Turkmen who angrily oppose the city's shift to the Kurdish region, a possibility which could be confirmed by referendum as early as next year.