ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Kurdish parties have agreed on the ministers they will send to Baghdad to join the new Iraqi cabinet, breaking weeks of deadlock over Kurdish participation in the national government.
The new government has been in power since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was sworn in on September 8, but Kurds have not taken up a series of cabinet posts due to political infighting and a general distrust of the central government.
The five largest parties from the Kurdish bloc met on Monday in Erbil to decide who would fill the positions.
Two powerful ministries have been given to members of Kurdistan’s largest party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), according to party sources. Rowsch Shaways will continue his role as Deputy Prime Minister. Hoshyar Zebari, who served as Iraq’s only Foreign Minister since 2003, will become the Minister of Finance.
That would give him oversight of national finances at a time when Baghdad is still locked in a dispute over Kurdish independent oil sales and budget allocations to the Kurdistan Region.
One provison set by the Kurds is that their continued participation in the government will depend on Baghdad meeting their conditions on settling these disputes.
Friyad Rawanduzi, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), will become Minister of Culture, according to the sources.
The Movement for Change (Gorran), and two moderate Islamist parties, the Kurdistan Islamic Union, with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Kurdistan Islamic Group are still deciding how to share out the Women’s Affairs and Immigration ministries.
In a visit to Erbil yesterday, UN special envoy to Iraq Nikolay Mladenov met with Kurdish lawmakers, urging them to go to Baghdad to cooperate on urgent security problems.
“To resolve these problems as quickly as possible the Kurdish ministers in the federal government must take their positions,” he told reporters.
Mladenov also suggested that the formal appointment of key Kurdish ministers could bring an end to Baghdad’s financial blockade of the region, which has not received its share of the country’s budget since January due to a dispute over the region’s independent oil exports.
“In order for Baghdad to pay the budget of the Kurdistan Region that has been cut from the beginning of 2014, Kurdish ministers of the federal government must return back to Baghdad, especially the Finance Minister and the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister,” he said.
Mladenov stressed that it “is necessary for the Kurdish people to receive their right to their budget,” and that the UN would continue to advocate this position with other members of the Iraqi government.
Iraqi politicians came under further international pressure on Monday from the British Forign Secretary, Philip Hammond on a visit to Baghdad.
The formation of a new Iraqi government was a critical first step to addressing the serious security, political and humanitarian challenges facing Iraq, he added.
"It is now vital that all communities in Iraq work together to overcome those challenges,” Mr Hammond, former Defence Secretary, said. "To do this, it will be important for interior and defence ministers to be appointed quickly and for Kurdish ministers to take up their positions in Baghdad."
