Time to revise Baghdad-Erbil terms, says Kurd leader

The relationship between the Iraq’s central government and semi-autonomous Kurds needs to be redefined to reflect Baghdad’s loss of influence across large swathes of the country, the Kurdish prime minister has said.

Nechervan Barzani called for a “new mechanism to navigate the course of future Erbil-Baghdad relations” during a meeting with Angus Mackay, the British consul to Erbil, on Saturday.

He added: “A new period has begun since ISIL captured Mosul [on June 10] and everybody must acknowledge that this has changed the whole status quo.”

The collapse of the central government’s authority in some parts of northern and western Iraq has emboldened the Kurdish Regional Government’s ambitions for an independent Kurdish state.

Barzani, the nephew of the regional government’s President Massoud Barzani, touched on the thousands of people displaced by ongoing violence in Iraq and called for more support from the international community and relief organizations.

“These people are faced with serious problems and the Kurdistan region alone cannot accommodate all the needs of the refugees and the displaced people, especially because their numbers are growing daily,” Barzani said in a separate meeting with Italian consul Carmelo Ficarra, reported on the regional government’s website.

He accused Baghdad of shirking responsibility for the refugees and the internally displaced and claimed the Kurdish authority has been left to shoulder the burden.

More than a million people have fled their homes since the onset of the ISIL-led insurgency in Iraq with large numbers flooding into the Kurdish region, considered one of the few safe refuges.

News report by Anadolu Agency