ARBIL, Iraq, Dec 26 (AFP) - 15h43 - A petition signed by more than 1.7 million Iraqi Kurds calling for a referendum on independence has been handed to the United Nations, campaigners said Sunday.

"A delegation from our organization travelled to UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday to hand over the petition which had been signed by more than 1.7 million Kurds," the Referendum Movement in Kurdistan said.

"The signatures were collected in towns across Iraqi Kurdistan," said spokesman Karwan Abdullah.

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.

But 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 organized a series of rallies in Kurdish cities in a bid to prove their support.

Neighbouring Iran, Syria and Turkey all have large Kurdish minorities of their own, and their governments are implacably opposed to Kurdish independence for fear it might encourage their own communities to try to secede.

Calls from the two mainstream factions for their autonomous region to be expanded to include the northern oil centre of Kirkuk and parts of two other provinces have met strong opposition from Turkey.

Source: KurdishMedia