Kurds seek compensation if they delay independence referendum
Kurds want Baghdad to settle debts and issues of disputed regions — particularly Kirkuk
Iraqi government officials may meet Kurdish representatives again next week to try to convince them to delay or cancel a plan to hold an independence referendum, a negotiator said.
A first round of talks, held last week in Baghdad, brought the two sides closer and a second round could be held next week in the Kurdish capital Arbil, Abdullah Al Al Zaidi, a member of the government negotiating team, told Reuters on Monday evening.
A Kurdish official, Mala Bakhtiar, on Saturday told Reuters the possibility of postponing a planned September 25 referendum on independence could be considered in return for financial and political concessions from the central government in Baghdad.
The United States and other Western nations fear the vote could ignite a new conflict with Baghdad and possibly neighbouring countries, diverting attention from the ongoing war against Daesh militants in Iraq and Syria.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson formally asked Massoud Barzani, president of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), two weeks ago to postpone the referendum.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis plans to press Barzani again to call off the referendum when they meet on Tuesday in Arbil, the Kurdish capital in northern Iraq, a US official travelling with him told Reuters.
“They (the Kurds) want guarantees,” said Al Zaidi, who is in charge of relations with the Kurdish parties at the National Alliance, Iraq’s Shiite ruling coalition. “The question of the guarantees has been left to the next round of talks.”
The Kurds will not agree to consider to delay the vote without fixing another date for it, said Bakhtiar, executive secretary of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Politburo.
At the political level, Baghdad should commit to agree to settle the issue of disputed regions such as the oil-rich area of Kirkuk, where Arab and Turkmen communities also live, he said.
On the economic side, Baghdad should be ready to help the Kurds overcome a financial crisis and settle debts owed by their government, he told Reuters in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.
He estimated the debt at $10 billion (Dh36.7 billion) to $12 billion, about equal to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s annual budget, owed to public works contractors and civil servants and Kurdish peshmerga fighters whose salaries have not been paid in full for several months.
Baghdad stopped payments from the Iraqi federal budget to the KRG in 2014 after the Kurds began exporting oil independently from Baghdad, via a pipeline to Turkey.
The Kurds say they need the extra revenue to cope with increased costs incurred by the war against Daesh and a large influx into KRG territory of displaced people.
The self-proclaimed Daesh “caliphate” effectively collapsed in July when US-backed Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul from the militants after a nine-month campaign in which Kurdish peshmerga fighters took part. Daesh militants remain, however, in control of territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria.
The United States has pledged to maintain its support of allied forces in both countries until the militants’ total defeat.
The Kurds have been seeking an independent state since at least the end of the First World War, when colonial powers divided up the Middle East and left Kurdish-populated territory split between modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Turkey, Iran and Syria, which together with Iraq have sizeable Kurdish communities, all oppose an independent Kurdistan. Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi’s government has rejected the planned referendum as “unilateral” and unconstitutional.
Kurdish officials have said disputed areas, including the Kirkuk region, will be covered by the referendum, to determine whether they would want to remain in Kurdistan or not.