BAKERHAMILTON REPORT

Named for former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and former U.S. Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton and also known as the Iraq Study Group (ISG) Report. Issued in December 2006 during the height of the horrificIraqicivil war, some of the Baker-Hamilton Report's 79 recommendations on how theUnited Statesshould proceed were hostile to the interests of theKurdistan Regional Government(KRG). These hostile recommendations concerned the weakening offederalism, postponing the implementation ofArticle 140onKirkuk, changing the Iraqi constitution, and the controlling ofoilresources. The intent of the report was to strengthen the central Iraqi government, but the Kurds felt that if implemented the result would be similar to the situation in 1975 when theAlgiers Agreement(Accord) betweenIranand Iraq caused Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq to collapse. Although U.S. presidentGeorge W. Bushdecided not to accept the Baker-Hamilton Report, the entire episode illustrated once again to the Iraqi Kurds how fragile their situation remained.