Kurdish parliament authorises referendum

Door still open for last minute compromise, Kurdish leader says

The Iraqi Kurdish parliament voted yesterday on holding an independence referendum while keeping the door open for a lastminute compromise in the face of mounting opposition from Baghdad.

The parliament in the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil, northern Iraq, voted on a motion giving “a legal framework” to the September 25 referendum that has also stirred protests from neighbouring states, especially Turkey.

Washington, for its part, opposes the referendum on the grounds that it would weaken Arab-Kurdish joint military operations which have helped to send Daesh into retreat in both Iraq and war-torn Syria.

Alternatives by US

The United States has proposed unspecified “alternatives” to which Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani has pledged to give a rapid response.

“If they have a stronger alternative to the referendum, the Kurdish leadership will look at it, but if they want to postpone the vote with no alternatives, we won’t,” Barzani, who set the referendum date in June, said on Thursday.

The parliament session was its first in two years, while Barzani’s mandate as president of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq officially expired in 2015.

Kurdish authorities have maintained that the threeyear-old battle to drive back Daesh has made it impossible to hold fresh elections.

The session in Arbil will follow two anti-referendum votes which passed earlier this week in the national parliament in Baghdad, both of which were boycotted by Kurdish legislators.

Analysts say the referendum plan which has stirred Arab-Kurdish ethnic tensions could mark the end of an era of cooperation during which Baghdad and Arbil battled Daesh following its seizure of swathes of northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014.

Turkey and Iran fear the referendum could stoke separatist aspirations among their own sizeable Kurdish minorities.

Ankara has warned of the “cost” to the Iraqi Kurds, whose economy is heavily dependent on oil exports via a pipeline running through Turkey to the Mediterranean.

On Thursday, the Iraqi parliament fired the governor of the northern oil-rich province of Kirkuk, Najm Al Deen Kareem, over his provincial council’s decision to take part in the non-binding Kurdish referendum.

The provincial council of the region disputed by Baghdad and Arbil is home to diverse communities, including Arabs and Turkmen who oppose the vote.

Regions such as Kirkuk are a highly sensitive issue in ethnically fragmented Iraq, with its Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and large Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities.