The office connects the oil-rich city with the Kurdish Regional Government, whose Peshmerga forces stepped in after Iraqi government forces retreated from an Islamic State sweep across northern Iraq in June.
“Opening this office here is to prove the Kurdish identity of Kirkuk and it should have taken place long ago,” Yousif Muhammad, speaker of Kurdistan’s Parliament, said on Thursday during the office’s inauguration, which was also attended by Najmaldin Karim, Kirkuk's governor.
“This is to become a bridge between Kirkuk and the Kurdistan Regional Government,” he said.
The people of Kirkuk could share their needs and complaints directly with Erbil through the new office and “their delegates can reach the Parliament in Erbil through this local branch,” said Muhammad.
In the past, he has said the KRG considers Kirkuk an inseparable part of Kurdistan and that its status will be decided in a referendum designed by the Kurds.
Some analysts have criticised the Kurdistan Region for quickly occupying the disputed territory of Kirkuk. But President Massoud Barzani has denied the Kurds are “eying anyone’s land.”
“The idea of a [independence] referendum is still there and will never be cancelled. At the moment, the priority is fighting IS but our right to self-determination is something that nothing can take away,” he said last week. “Kirkuk will be included in the referendum and the people of Kirkuk themselves will decide.”
Erbil will work with Baghdad to solve the issue of Kirkuk “once and for all but if Iraq doesn't co-operate, we will take the issue to the United Nations and seek the path of a referendum to decide this city’s future for good,” Muhammad said.
Governor Karim, meanwhile, urged the Kurdish parliament to pass a law that “would allow the people of Kirkuk to participate in Kurdistan Region’s elections.”
Latif Fatih Faraj was named head of the parliamentary office to run Parliament’s daily affairs in the city.
The KRG has started lifting large volumes of crude from a Kirkuk oil field, the Iraq Oil Report said this week. It described it as a bold step likely to exacerbate the KRG’s dispute with the Kirkuk provincial administration and the government in Baghdad about who rightfully controls Iraq’s oil exports.
Some 24,000 Peshmerga troops now protect the city, Najmaldin Karim, Kirkuk's governor, said last month.
