ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has criticized Baghdad and the international community for not inviting Kurdish leaders to an anti-ISIS summit in Paris, saying the alleged slight shows a disregard for the Kurds' role in the battle against Islamic State. “The federal government didn’t invite any representative from Kurdistan to the Paris meeting and have participated in this gathering alone,” said," a statement released Tuesday by the KRG’s Department of Foreign Relations. The statement also criticized the international community for ignoring the role of Peshmerga forces by having no representation from Erbil. “The Peshmerga are the only forces that have so far bravely battled the terrorists and driven them out of our territories,” the KRG statement continued. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived earlier Tuesday for the high-level meeting of the international coalition combating the Islamic State. Representatives from some of the 60 allied states combating the jihadists, including the US, the UK and France, would be on hand to discuss the coalition’s strategies against the radical group. The KRG also pointed to other reasons for its displeasure at being left out. “We were expecting the central government of Iraq as well as international community to respect the Kurdistan region and the Peshmerga and value the region’s great efforts to protect more than 1.5 million refugees despite our limited facilities,” the statement said. The KRG said it attempted to discuss the Paris summit with Iraqi Foreign Ministry but the issues was left "unsolved." A similar meeting was held in Paris in September 2014 to discuss ways to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq, where the radical Sunni group holds large swathes of territory. Kurdish Peshmerga forces, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, have battled ISIS on multiple front since last year.
