Iraq Kurdish leader to step down amid referendum fallout

ARBIL, Iraq: Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, told a closed-door session of the regional parliament Sunday he was stepping down amid the fallout from a controversial independence referendum.

Kurdish forces agreed Sunday to surrender to central government control the strategic border post of Fishkhabur, through which pipelines export oil to Ceyhan in Turkey.

That came after weeks of armed clashes in which Baghdad reasserted control over swathes of oil-rich Kurdish-held territory, dealing a severe blow to Barzani’s ambitions of Kurdish statehood.

“After Nov 1, I will no longer exercise my functions, and I reject any extension of my mandate,” 71year-old Barzani said in a letter read out to parliament in the Kurdish capital Arbil, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

“Changing the law on the presidency of Kurdistan or prolonging the presidential term is not acceptable,” it read.

“I ask parliament to meet to fill the vacancy in power, to fulfil the mission and to assume the powers of the presidency of Kurdistan,” the letter said.

Barzani, who organised the Sept 25 referendum in defiance of Baghdad and world powers, said he would ‘remain a peshmerga’ (Kurdish fighter) and “continue to defend the achievements of the people of Kurdistan”.

After the letter was read, the parliamentdecidedonaprovisional redistribution of Barzani’s powers until a presidential election, for which a date has yet to be fixed.

Both presidential and legislative elections had originally been slated for Nov 1, but these were postponed in the chaos that followed the poll, in which Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence.

Sunday’s parliamentary session was postponed several times amid political tensions.

Dozens of men wielding sticks and stones rushed at the parliament building late Sunday, hitting out at journalists, according to media reports and MPs.

Police fired in the air to disperse them.

The opposition Goran party, which had sought Barzani’s resignation and a “government of national salvation”, opposes the redistribution of the presidency’s powers.

That plan was proposed by the major Kurdish parties, Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its rival Kurdish Patriotic Union (PUK).

Barzani “symbolises the failure of Kurdish politics, and the only thing left for him to do is to issue a public apology,” Goran MP Rabun Maarouf said before the session began.

Barzani hit back in a televised address later Sunday and denounced the ‘high treason on Oct 16’, in reference to the a PUK withdrawal from Kirkuk without resisting the advancing government forces.

PUK leaders said they had agreed the retreat with Barzani.

KDP deputy Ari Harin spoke of an ‘international plot’.

The federal government deemed the independence vote unconstitutional.

In a sweeping advance into disputed territories, Iraqi forces seized key oilfields in and around the province of Kirkuk, dealing a devastating blow to Arbil’s finances. — AFP