Maliki: Dispute with Kurdistan Has Been ‘Exaggerated’

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a television interview that a budget and oil dispute with the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north has been “exaggerated,” and that the central government felt a sense of responsibility toward the Kurds.

“I don’t know why the problems have been so exaggerated,” Maliki said in an interview with the semi-official Al-Iraqiya TV. “We feel responsible for Kurdistan and its people, even if the Kurdish government doesn’t feel that way,” he added.

Iraq’s Shiite-led government is locked in a serious quarrel with the Kurdistan Region. Baghdad insists that oil revenues from oil exports that Erbil wants to begin to Turkey through a new pipeline should be handled by its State Oil Marketing Organization; the Kurds want to handle export and revenues, with SOMO as an observer.

In order to put pressure on the Kurds, Maliki and his close advisors have cut the KRG from the national budget. Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani has called that tantamount to “a declaration of war.”

Maliki said that budget payments had simply been delayed, explaining that one of the reasons was over the amount of oil -- 400,000 barrels – that Kurdistan was supposed to export daily.

Meanwhile, independent Iraqi MP Hussein Assadi said that Iraq’s main three leaders are responsible for the impasse, arguing that Maliki, Barzani and parliamentary speaker Osama Nujaifi should meet to resolve the issues.

Assadi, who was once in Maliki’s own State of Law coalition, said that the premier was responsible for the delay in passing the budget law and that the Kurds were to partly blame for their disagreements with Iraqi parliamentary blocs.

According to Assadi, al-Mutahidun, Nujaifi’s Sunni-majority bloc which often boycotts parliamentary sessions, is not helping to resolve the current crisis.

The Iraqi MP believes that only a face-to-face meeting with Maliki, Nujaifi and Barzani can resolve the quarrels. He said the leaders need to tell their MPs to reach an agreement, particularly on the budget.

In the midst of this crisis between Baghdad and Erbil are the country’s Sunnis, who have their own suspicions of the federal government.

They have come out in support of the Kurdish region, blaming Iraq’s Shiite government for much of the escalation of security and economic crises.

“The Kurds are the closest to us geographically, religiously and in terms of ideas and civilization,” said Athil Nujaifi, head of the Sunni government of Nineveh province. “We both have a mutual interest in opening up to the outside world,” he said in a public statement.

The Nineveh governor called for further cooperation between the Kurds and Sunnis, by lending his full support to a meeting between President Barzani and the parliamentary speaker.

The Iraqi constitution grants the Kurds 17 percent of the federal budget, to be paid in installments throughout the year. But the budget has often been used a trump card by Baghdad to draw the Kurds to the negotiating table.

In response to Baghdad’s freezing of the budget, the Kurdish government is contemplating counter measures, such as blocking two major rivers that water vast agricultural lands in the center and south of Iraq.

Some Kurdish officials in Kirkuk have also called for stopping exports of Kirkuk oil, which is sold by the Iraqi government.