“There is nothing like handing over anyone. They have been in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region since the 80s and during the Baathist regime and a large number of them have been registered with UNCHR as immigrants,” Safin Dizayee, the KRG spokesperson, told a press conference in Erbil on Thursday.
On Tuesday, Iran’s top general demanded the Kurdistan Region “hand over” Iranian-Kurdish dissidents based in the Region.
“The state of Iraq and Kurdistan Region must not allow bases to be built that would cause insecurity and in fact they must hand all of them over,” Maj. Gen. Mohammed Bagheri, commander-in-chief of all armed forces, said in comments carried by Fars news.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) fired seven surface-to-surface missiles across the border on Saturday morning, striking camps and headquarters of two Iranian-Kurdish parties, the PDKI and the KDP-I, near the Kurdistan Region’s Koya while they were holding leadership meetings.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is officially opposed to any Kurdish group using the Region’s territory to attack neighbouring Iran or Turkey and it repeated this stance after Saturday’s strikes.
Dizayee said the Iranian Kurdish opposition groups should “respect the immigration laws” and not “use the Kurdistan Region as a base to destabilize the security and stability of the neighbouring country.”
The long standing rivalry between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kurdish groups must only be resolved through peaceful means, he added.
Iranian-Kurdish parties have had camps and bases in the present-day Kurdistan Region since the early 1980s.
