ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — While calling the Kurdistan Region's independence referendum "disruptive" to Iraqi unity, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged the Iraqi constitution remains unimplemented and an impediment to addressing Kurdish grievances.
"[W]e are supporting both de-confliction and we’re supporting a re-engagement around the Iraqi constitution which was never fully implemented," Tillerson said at the Atlantic Council-Korea Foundation Forum on Tuesday.
While Washington continues to work "between Baghdad and Erbil to ensure the two parties remain unified," Tillerson emphasized that "the policy has always been a unified Iraq."
The United States opposed the timing of the Kurdistan Region's September 25 independence referendum especially holding it in the disputed areas like Kirkuk, saying it would distract from the war against ISIS.
Since that time, Iraq declared victory over ISIS on Saturday and in October took control over all disputed or Kurdistani territories claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad using Iraqi forces including Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries who clashed with Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
Tillerson's State Department has since acknowledged that the disputed areas remain so.
Tillerson, on Tuesday, promised Kurdish support on the condition of "the full implementation of the Iraqi constitution."
"And we will stand ... with the Kurds to support them in the full implementation of the Iraqi constitution, when it is fully implemented, will address a number of grievances that the Kurdish people have had for some time and we hope will lead to that unified Iraq," Tillerson said.
Erbil claims Baghdad has violated 55 articles of the constitution, while the Shiite National Alliance claims the KRG has committed 100 violations.
The KRG also has claimed that Baghdad has cherry picked portions of the constitution.
Following the referendum in which 93 percent of votes counted indicated in favor of separation from Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government said it respects a ruling by an Iraqi Federal Court that Iraq is a parliamentary and democratic republic with the constitution as the guarantor of its unity, saying it could become the basis for dialogue.
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has so far refused international political mediation, saying the disagreement between the central and regional governments is an internal Iraqi matter.
French President Emmanuel Macron offered to mediate between both sides in November.
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