ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - In a meeting with the Kurdish prime minister on Saturday, US Senator John McCain applauded the Peshmerga forces and the people of Kurdistan for their resistance against the Islamic State (ISIS).
According to a report on the official website of Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, McCain said that the Kurdistan Region has a special position for protecting human values and that the United States and people of the free world appreciate the Kurdish stance.
The Republican senator has been a vocal supporter of the Kurds for years, and on his visit to Erbil he was accompanied by a diplomatic and military delegation to study further military support for the Peshmerga forces.
The Peshmerga are a brave force and they should have the same weapons that their enemies have, he told Rudaw.
He added that he will make every effort to secure his country’s arms support for the Kurdish forces.
McCain held a lengthy meeting with Peshmerga Minister Mustafa Sayid Qadir and a team of Kurdish military officers.
For his part, Barzani said that America’s military response and airstrikes against ISIS were instrumental and changed the balance of the war against the extremist group.
Barzani said that the Kurdistan Region continues to be a safe haven for Christians, Yezidis and other religious minorities fleeing persecution from the rest of Iraq and that his government will do all it can to assist them.
He added, however, that Kurdistan still needs further military and humanitarian assistance and that Erbil hoped the US would play a major role in this regard.
The voice for arming the Kurds directly without going through Baghdad has grown louder recently among US officials.
As many as 32 members of the US Congress have endorsed a bill urging Washington to supply arms to the Kurdish forces.
Earlier this month Bloomberg reported that at the start of the next year the US military will start training three divisions of the Kurdish Peshmerga, a step that is also expected to transform the force into a national army.
McCain also met with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, who thanked the US for its continued backing for Kurdistan and in the Syrian town of Kobane, where Peshmerga and local Kurdish forces are fighting ISIS with US air support.
