ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Meetings led by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani in Baghdad to resolve rows over Erbil’s oil exports and budget ended inconclusively, with a decision to continue the talks at a later date.
Barzani called for the next meeting to be held in Erbil.
The Kurdish delegation held two meetings with an Iraqi team led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Affairs Hussein Shahristani and Iraqi Oil Minister Abdulkarim al-Lueibi. The Kurdish side also met separately with the two ministers, without Maliki.
The KRG visit comes just days after al-Lueibi threatened to take legal action against the KRG and Turkey over Kurdish oil exports, calling it "smuggled" oil. He warned Ankara over what he said was its interference in Iraqi internal affairs.
KRG spokesman Safeen Dizaye told Rudaw before the talks that, "The main goal of the visit is to find a solution for the pending budget and oil issues between the two sides."
Sources told Rudaw that the KRG has put forward two proposals to resolve the oil and budget issues.
The first is for the KRG to deduct the money from oil exports pertaining to its 17 percent of the budget, the payment for the Peshmarga and unpaid dues by Baghdad for foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan.
The second option, in case there is a failure to agree to the previous one, is for the oil revenues to be placed in Turkey’s Halk Bank, and for the KRG to draw the money to compensate Kurds who suffered under successive Iraqi regimes.
Iraq's acting finance minister Fazil Nabi, a Kurd, explained that despite the row the KRG’s share of the budget continues to flow to the Kurdish enclave.
"Despite the ongoing issues between KRG and Baghdad, we continue to send the budget to Kurdistan. We even sent the share of the budget for January 2014 to Erbil," he said.
Nabil accused Shahristani of being antagonistic toward the Kurdish region and asking for its budget to be cut.
"It’s quite clear that Shahristani is against the Kurdistan Region and he constantly accuses me of sending Kurdistan’s share of the budget without caring about his directives to cut the KRG’s budget,” he said.
"We have always said that we don't depend on Shahristani’s directives when it comes to sending money to Kurdistan," he told Rudaw.
