Tabnak – Facing increasing pressures from the neighboring countries and not meeting their expected support from trans-regional powers, Iraq’s Kurdistan region has declared its readiness to freeze the results of recent independence referendum. However, it’s not expected that Baghdad would accept anything other than total revocation of the results.
According to a BBC report, Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Region has offered to "freeze" the result of September's referendum on independence and begin dialogue with Baghdad. A statement also proposed a ceasefire "in order to prevent further violence and clashes" between the Kurdish forces and the government.
"The confrontation between the Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga since October 16, 2017 has caused damage to both sides. It may also result in continued bloodshed and result in cutting the social relations between the Iraqi components,” the statement says.
Based on this, the statement proposes "the immediate cessation of fighting and every kind of military operations in the Kurdistan Region as well as freezing the outcome of the referendum that was held in the Iraqi Kurdistan”. It also offers "beginning an open dialogue between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the federal government on the basis of the Iraqi constitution.”
The announcement came shortly after the parliament in the autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan announced that legislative and presidential elections that were delayed due the ongoing political stand-off with Baghdad would be held in eight months.
The development may end weeks of simmering tensions between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government over the September 25 referendum, held in open defiance of the central government in Baghdad.
Iraq, along with neighbors Iran and Turkey, opposed the vote, warning that the referendum would further complicate the security situation in the Arab country that has been grappling with foreign-backed militancy in its north and west for the past three years.
However, the latest call for dialogue by Iraqi Kurdistan region comes as Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the KRG should cancel the vote’s outcome as a pre-condition for talks.
He had yet to react to the Kurdish proposal on Wednesday, when he began an official visit to neighboring Turkey and Iran during which relations with the Kurds – whose communities are established in parts of all three countries as well as Syria – will be high on the agenda.
It should be noted that following the September referendum, Iraqi government imposed a blockade against the Kurdish region and the country’s army entered the disputed areas including the oil-rich Kirkuk to restore federal government sovereignty over disputed lands claimed by Kurds.
Iraq’s neighbors including Iran and Turkey called the Erbil referendum destabilizing and cut their ties with the KRG. The international community including the UN Security Council, the US and many other countries who are supportive of the Kurdish autonomous region declared their opposition to the KRG move.
