BAGHDAD: The two major Kurdish parties on Sunday rejected Baghdad’s demand to cancel the results of the independence referendum as a precondition to hold bilateral talks to solve the pending problems, China\’s Xinhua news agency reported, told Bernama.
The Kurdish rejection came after a meeting held in Dukan resort in Sulaimaniyah province between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by regional president Masoud Barzani, and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which the Iraqi President Fuad Masoum is one of its leading figures.
Barzani and Masum headed the high-level meeting with the aim of discussing the standoff between Baghdad and the Kurdish semi-autonomous region after the referendum on independence that was held on Sept 25 in the Kurdish region and the disputed areas claimed by the Kurds outside the region.
The KDP and PUK parties “strongly rejected calls to cancel the referendum vote in order to enter into talks with Baghdad,” according to a joint statement by the two parties issued after the several-hour meeting.
“The Kurdistan parties are still ready to hold an open, unconditional and constructive negotiations on the basis of the interests of both Baghdad and Erbil under international supervision,” the statement said.
On Sept 27, the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on the Kurdish regional government to cancel the results of the controversial independence referendum.
“We want Kurdistan region to cancel the outcomes of the referendum if they want to start talks with Baghdad, which must be under the roof of the constitution,\” Abadi told the lawmaker when attended a parliament session to discuss the crisis with the Kurds.
Baghdad government also adopted punitive measures that included suspension of international flights to the Kurdish region and blocked all the border crossings, which are outside the control of the federal authorities, and called on the neighboring countries (Turkey and Iran) to help Iraq in implementing its measures.
The independence of Kurdistan is opposed not only by the Iraqi central government, but also by most other countries, because it would threaten the integrity of Iraq and undermine the fight against Islamic State militants.
Iraq’s neighboring countries, especially Turkey, Iran and Syria, fear that the Iraqi Kurdish independence move would threaten their territorial integrity, as large population of Kurds live in those countries.
The US had repeatedly warned the Kurds to postpone the referendum, saying such move could derail or confuse the war against IS.
