Iraqi Kurds face the heat over vote
arbil— Iraq’s Kurds faced mounting international pressure on Friday, including from neighbouring Iran, to call off an independence referendum that the UN Security Council warned was potentially destabilising.
It came ahead of a press conference on Saturday at which Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani is expected to announce whether the vote will go ahead as planned on Monday in the autonomous region.
The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations, Major General Qassem Soleimani, was in Iraqi Kurdistan’s province of Sulaimaniyah on Friday and was to head to its capital Arbil, a high-ranking source in the province said.
“It’s his last visit before the referendum to advise Kurdish officials that Iran is seriously hostile to it and warn them to call it off,” the source said. Iran has a sizeable Kurdish population and fears the vote will stoke separatist aspirations at home. —
new york — The UN Security Council on Thursday warned that a referendum on independence by Iraq’s Kurdistan region was potentially destabilising, adding its weight to international opposition to the vote.
In a unanimous statement, the 15-member council said the referendum planned for Monday could hinder efforts to help refugees return home and weaken the military campaign against the Daesh group.
The move heightened pressure on Iraqi Kurd leaders to call off the vote after Turkey, Iran and Iraq urged them to abandon the plan that is also opposed by the United States.
Council members “expressed concern over the potentially destabilizing impact of the Kurdistan regional government’s plans to unilaterally hold a referendum next week,” said the statement. “The planned referendum is scheduled to be held while counter-Daesh operations — in which Kurdish forces have played a critical role — are ongoing,” it added.
The council urged “dialogue and compromise” to address differences between the Iraqi government and the regional authorities.
Iraqi Kurds will vote on September 25 in the non-binding referendum on whether to declare independence in a region that has already been autonomous since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
The United States has warned it may not be able to help Iraq’s Kurds negotiate a better deal with the Iraqi government if they go ahead with an independence vote.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged the Iraqi Kurds to scrap the referendum and offered United Nations help to negotiate a new political deal between Baghdad and the Kurds. United Nations envoy to Iraq, Jan Kubis, told Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani last week that the United Nations was ready to broker negotiations between the Kurds and Baghdad, according to a document obtained by AFP. The negotiations would aim to reach a deal within two or three years on the “principles and arrangements” for future relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish region, the document said. —