ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament said that Baghdad does not want to pay the salaries of the Peshmerga and expects Erbil to reimburse them from its own oil revenues. “I have asked Prime Minister (Haidar) Abadi to send the salaries of 150,000 Peshmerga, just as he is paying to one million other security agencies,” Shakhawan Abdullah, a Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament, told Rudaw on Sunday. He said that in response to his request "Abadi told lawmakers Baghdad will not pay Peshmerga forces; the Kurdistan region should pay them from oil revenue." The Peshmerga are in the frontlines of the fighting against the Islamic State (ISIS). “They fight ISIS and they have sacrificed lots of lives,” Abdullah said. According to him, Abadi wants the Kurdistan region to provide the salaries of the Peshmerga through its own oil revenues. The remarks came a week after a high-ranking Kurdish delegation visited Baghdad to discuss Baghdad-Erbil relations, the financial crisis and the war against ISIS. According to the constitution, Baghdad must pay for the nation’s security forces, including the Peshmerga. But the autonomous Kurdistan government has been criticized by Baghdad over its oil sales, leading to a row and Baghdad refusing to pay the 17 percent share of the national budget that constitutionally must go to the Kurds.
