Iraq is to carry out its first nationwide census in two decades in October and, in a decision pregnant with consequences for Kurdish ambitions for wider autonomy, will ask all citizens their ethnicity. Householders will be asked their religion but amid the super-sensitive divide between Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and its Sunni Muslim former elite will not be asked to specify their sect. The census will however offer an opportunity to gauge the scale of the exodus of the country's Christian community, which some analysts say has halved from its estimated 800,000 strength at the time of the US-led invasion of 2003. “International norms do not demand a question on ethnic origin because technically everyone has the same citizenship rights,” said George Georgi, Iraq representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Ethnicity is a potentially explosive issue in Iraq amid the deep divide between its Arab and Kurdish populations. The Kurds have enjoyed self-rule in three northern provinces since the early 1970s but have long demanded the expansion of their autonomous region to include the northern oil city of Kirkuk and parts of other provinces. That demand is opposed by the Arab settlers that executed president Saddam Hussein's regime moved into Kirkuk and other strategic areas in a bid to dilute their Kurdish majorities. It is also opposed by many members of the Turkmen minority, who have enjoyed the support of Ankara in their op __
