The roots of their insistence can be glimpsed at the monument and museum in the northern town of Halabja, which opened last September to mark the killing of 5,000 civilians in 1988 when Iraqi aircraft dropped nerve agent, cyanide and mustard gas. "You see the pictures in the museum of burned children and twisted bodies, and then you know why the Kurds want federalism," said a woman who fled to Iran at the time.

The Kurds, allied with the US-led coalition in ousting Saddam Hussein, are disappointed with the lack of progress in Iraq. Their leaders are privately digesting the strong likelihood that neither the president nor the prime minister in the transitional government to take office on July 1 will be Kurdish. They fear they may even lose the foreign ministry, the only top position now held by a Kurd.

"This is a great disappointment - and it's a mistake for both to be Arab," said Mr Mustapha. "It's like Ba'athist times when no Kurd was allowed in a senior post."

There had been speculation that Jalal Talabani, the PUK leader, would become prime minister in the interim government to be announced shortly after horse-trading among the US-led administration, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy, and Iraqi political groups.

Kurdish aspirations have nevertheless been encouraged by their improved fortunes under de facto self-rule since Mr Hussein withdrew from northern Iraq in 1991.

Economic development in the Kurdish region has proceeded apace and contrasts with the chaos in most of the rest of Iraq. Suleimaniya is set to pip Arbil in opening the first ever airport in Kurdish Iraq, with the first flight arriving, probably from Ankara, in December.

A road is being built along the stunning Azmar mountain overlooking Suleimaniya, in anticipation of Gulf investment in tourism. The Kurdish administration has also set up banking schemes to lend money for house construction and farming.

"We could be in a position to offer advice to the rest of Iraq," says Mr Mustapha. "But the problem there is with the security situation, and this won't improve until the Iraqis are in charge. Even under the new government security will be with John Negroponte [who will be the US ambassador to Iraq after June 30]."

Despite recent setbacks, the Kurds remain hopeful that Arab groups will accept Kurdish federalism.

"We understand that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani objected to having the TAL [the Transitional Administrative Law] in the UN resolution because it should not pre-empt the decision of the Iraqi parliament to be elected in January," said Mr Mustapha, referring to the stance of Iraq's most influential Shia cleric. "So perhaps this is a matter of timing."

But despite their longstanding agreement over federalism with Arab opposition groups, the Kurds, who maintain at least 30,000 in armed forces, are prepared for all eventualities.

As the war ended in April, the Kurds "liberated" the stocks of arms - including heavy weapons - held by the Iraqi army in the north.

"I don't know whether the future of Iraq is stability or civil war," said Mr Mustapha, who himself spent 19 years as a guerrilla fighter.

"The Kurds want peace," he said. "We don't think there is a strong tendency against federalism, but in any case we will not negotiate away our national identity and rights."