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Baghdad greets Kurds' oil deal with astonishment
Drilling begins in ethnic enclave without the central government's OK

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - A controversial oil exploration deal between Iraq's autonomy-minded Kurds and a Norwegian company got under way this week without the approval of the central government here, raising a potentially explosive issue at a time of heightened ethnic and sectarian tensions.

...In Baghdad, political leaders on Wednesday reacted to the deal with astonishment.

"We need to figure out if this is allowed in the constitution," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. "Nobody has mentioned it. It has not come up among the government ministers council. It has not been on their agenda."

The start of drilling is sure to send shivers down the spines of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority. They fear a disintegration of Iraq into separate ethnic and religious cantons if regions begin to cut energy deals with foreign countries and governments. Sunnis are concentrated in Iraq's most oil-poor region.

Iraq's neighbors also fear the possibility of Iraqi Kurds using revenue generated by oil to fund an independent state that might lead the 30 million Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Syria to revolt....