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The fourth session of Armenian–Iraqi intergovernmental committee on issues of economic, commercial, scientific and technical cooperation is launching in Yerevan on Monday, September 25.
The Iraqi delegation has already arrived in the Armenian capital, the ministry of territorial administration and development said in a statement.
The session will last through September 26.
The previous session of the committee was held in 2016 in Baghdad.
ERBIL/SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – Voting began in northern Iraq on Monday in an independence referendum organized by Kurdish authorities, ignoring pressure from Baghdad, threats from neighboring Turkey and Iran, and international warnings it may ignite yet more regional conflict.
The vote, expected to deliver a comfortable “yes” for independence, is not binding. However, it is designed to give Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a mandate to negotiate the secession of the oil producing region with Baghdad and neighboring states.
For Iraqi Kurds – the largest ethnic group left stateless when the Ottoman empire collapsed a century ago – the referendum offers a historic opportunity despite the intense international pressure to call it off.
“We have seen worse, we have seen injustice, killings and blockades,” said Talat, waiting to cast a vote in the regional capital of Erbil, as group of smiling women, in traditional colorful Kurdish dress, emerged from the school showing their fingers stained with ink, a sign that they voted.
The Kurds also say the vote acknowledges their crucial contribution in confronting Islamic State after it overwhelmed the Iraqi army in 2014 and seized control of a third of Iraq.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq on Sunday urged foreign countries to stop importing crude directly from its autonomous Kurdistan region and to restrict oil trading to the central government.
The call, published in statement from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office, came in retaliation for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s plan to hold a referendum on independence on Monday.
The central government’s statement seems to be directed primarily at Turkey, the transit country for all the crude produced in Kurdistan. The crude is taken by pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast for export.
Baghdad “asks the neighboring countries and the countries of the world to deal exclusively with the federal government of Iraq in regards to entry posts and oil,” the statement said.
The Iraqi government has always opposed independent sales of crude by the KRG, and tried on many occasions to block Kurdish oil shipments.
Long-standing disputes over land and oil resources are among the main reasons cited by the KRG to ask for independence.
Iraqi Kurdistan produces around 650,000 barrels per day of crude from its fields, including around 150,000 from the disputed areas of Kirkuk.
Three civilians have been killed when Turkish fighter jets bombarded Duhok province in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, a report says.
“The Turkish aerial bombing that targeted the border area of Saidan of Amadiya city in Duhok province, left three civilians dead” on Wednesday, Iraq’s al-Sumaria news website quoted a media official in the province as saying. Mahmoud Nahily said an unspecified number of people were also injured.
Eyewitnesses had earlier said Turkish warplanes attacked border areas north of the province.
Turkish forces have been conducting ground operations as well as airstrikes against the positions of the the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in Turkey’s troubled southeastern border region and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region for nearly two years.
The campaign began following the July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, which claimed more than 30 civilian lives. Turkish officials held the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group responsible for the act of terror.
The PKK militants, who accuse the Ankara government of supporting Daesh, launched a string of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish security forces after the bomb attack, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.
The militants have been waging a bloody campaign in southeastern Turkey for decades, which has left more than 40,000 people dead.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters march in Irbil on September 13 in support of the planned independence referendum.
Iraq’s Supreme Court has ordered the suspension of an independence referendum in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan scheduled for next week.
The Supreme Court in Baghdad said in a September 18 statement that it has “issued a national order to suspend the referendum procedures…until the resolution of the cases regarding the constitutionality of said decision.”
It is not clear if Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq would abide by the court’s ruling.
Baghdad has repeatedly condemned the referendum as unconstitutional.
The United States and the United Nations have called on the Iraqi Kurdistan region to hold off the vote amid concerns that it could contribute to instability as Iraqi forces fight the extremist group Islamic State (IS).
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on September 17 warned that the planned September 25 referendum “would detract from the need to defeat” IS and to rebuild cities captured from the extremists.
Countries in the region, including Iran and Turkey, have also have also vehemently opposed the referendum amid fears that it could encourage their Kurdish minorities to break away.
Iran on September 17 warned that should Iraq’s Kurdistan region gain its independence, it would mean an end to all border and security arrangements agreed previously between Tehran and the regional government.
Turkey on September 18 launched a military drill with tanks close to the Iraqi border, the army said.
Ankara’s national security council will meet on September 22 to discuss the country’s official position on the referendum.
Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki
Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki has denounced a planned Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq, warning that Baghdad would not tolerate the establishment of “a second Israel,” after the occupying regime became the only entity to support the so-called plebiscite.
Maliki, who was also Iraq’s prime minister from 2006 to 2014, made the remarks in a meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq, Douglas Silliman, in the capital Baghdad on Sunday, adding that the leaders of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan must “call off the referendum.”
The so-called independence plebiscite “is contrary to the constitution and does not serve the general interests of the Iraqi people, not even the particular interests of the Kurds,” Maliki said.
His comments came two days after lawmakers of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in its capital Erbil, approved the September 25 referendum as opposition legislators boycotted the parliament’s first session in two years.
Sixty-five out of the 68 Kurdish lawmakers present in the 111-seat regional parliament held the secession vote in the face of fierce opposition from the central government in Baghdad, the United Nations and the United States.
“We will not allow the creation of a second Israel in the north of Iraq,” Maliki said at the meeting, according to a statement released by the vice president’s office, warning that such a vote would have “dangerous consequences for the security, sovereignty and unity of Iraq.” He also urged the Kurdish leaders to come to the negotiating table
Washington has already expressed its opposition to the referendum, arguing that it would weaken the Arab-Kurdish joint military operations that have managed to make Daesh Takfiri terrorist group retreat in both Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The White House has also warned that holding the vote in “disputed areas” would be “provocative and destabilizing,” urging leaders of the Kurdistan region to call off the referendum and begin serious and sustained negotiations with Baghdad.
A close ally of the United States, the Israeli regime, however, has come out in apparent support of the controversial referendum. Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Tel Aviv regime “supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own.”
This file photo taken on August 05, 2014 shows an Iraqi Airways Boeing 747 sitting at Baghdad International Airport. (Photo by AFP)
Russia and Iraq restored scheduled commercial airline services on Sunday for the first time since 2004, in what officials hailed as a sign of stability returning to the war-torn country.
An Iraqi Airways plane left Baghdad at 10.31 am (0731 GMT) and was expected to arrive at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport at 2.19 pm (1119 GMT), according to the Russian airport’s online departure and arrival timetables.
“The first commercial flight arrives today,” Sergei Izvolsky, spokesman for Russia’s civil aviation authority, told AFP.
“It is a signal on the part of the Iraqi authorities that Russian nationals can safely visit Iraq.”
The two countries may also later agree on air travel to the Iraqi city of Basra, Izvolsky said.
Russia suspended regular flights to Iraq in 2004 after the US-led invasion in 2003 plunged the Arab country into war.
(Source: AFP)
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi speaking during an interview with the Associated Press. Photo: AP videopm,force,kurdistan
By Associated Press,
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq is prepared to intervene militarily if the Kurdish region’s planned independence referendum results in violence, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Saturday.
If the Iraqi population is “threatened by the use of force outside the law, then we will intervene militarily,” he said.
Iraq’s Kurdish region plans to hold the referendum on support for independence from Iraq on Sept. 25 in three governorates that make up their autonomous region, and in disputed areas controlled by Kurdish forces but which are claimed by Baghdad.
“If you challenge the constitution and if you challenge the borders of Iraq and the borders of the region, this is a public invitation to the countries in the region to violate Iraqi borders as well, which is a very dangerous escalation,” al-Abadi said.
The leaders of Iraq’s Kurdish region have said they hope the referendum will push Baghdad to come to the negotiating table and create a path for independence. However, al-Abadi said such negotiations would likely be complicated by the referendum vote.
“It will make it harder and more difficult,” he said, but added: “I will never close the door to negotiations. Negotiations are always possible.”
Iraq’s Kurds have come under increasing pressure to call off the vote from regional powers and the United States, a key ally, as well as Baghdad.
In a statement released late Friday night the White House called for the Kurdish region to call off the referendum “and enter into serious and sustained dialogue with Baghdad.”
“Holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilizing,” the statement read.
Tensions between Irbil and Baghdad have flared in the lead-up to the Sept. 25 vote.
Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, has repeatedly threatened violence if Iraqi military or Shiite militias attempt to move into disputed territories that are now under the control of Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga, specifically the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
“It’s chaotic there,” Muhammad Mahdi al-Bayati, a senior leader of Iraq’s mostly Shiite fighters known as the popular mobilization forces, said earlier this week, describing Kirkuk in the lead up to the vote.
Al-Bayati’s forces – sanctioned by Baghdad, but many with close ties to Iran – are deployed around Kirkuk as well as other disputed territories in Iraq’s north.
“Everyone is under pressure,” he said, explaining that he feared a rogue group of fighters could trigger larger clashes. “Anything could be the spark that burns it all down.”
Al-Abadi said he is focused on legal responses to the Kurdish referendum on independence. Earlier this week Iraq’s parliament rejected the referendum in a vote boycotted by Kurdish lawmakers.
Iraq’s Kurds have long held a dream of statehood. Brutally oppressed under Saddam Hussein, whose military in the 1980s killed at least 50,000 of them, many with chemical weapons, Iraq’s Kurds established a regional government in 1992 after the U.S. enforced a no-fly zone across the north following the Gulf War.
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam, the region secured constitutional recognition of its autonomy, but remained part of the Iraqi state.
When asked if he would ever accept an independent Kurdistan, Al-Abadi said: “It’s not up to me, this is a constitutional” matter.
“If (Iraq’s Kurds) want to go along that road, they should work toward amending the constitution,” al-Abadi said. “In that case we have to go all the way through parliament and a referendum to the whole Iraqi people.
“For them to call for only the Kurds to vote, I think this is a hostile move toward the whole of the Iraqi population,” he said.
The only border point for Iraq and Jordan had been closed since the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group took control of the area in 2014. The hoped-for return of commercial traffic will be important for both economies.
At a re-opening ceremony at the border crossing on Wednesday, Jordanian Interior Minister Ghaleb Zohbi stood with his Iraqi counterpart, Qassem al-Araji, saying security had been restored three years after the IS group seized control of the frontier areas. An official statement from the two governments said the border point had been secured “against attacks by criminal gangs.”
“The opening of the crossing is of great importance to Jordan and Iraq,” Zohbi said earlier. “It’s a crucial artery. Jordan and Iraq have been discussing reopening it for a while.”
Iraq was once Jordan’s main export market, taking 20 percent of its domestic exports. Until 2014, Jordan was also the gateway for car exports to Iraq.
Securing the highway
The governor of Anbar province, Mohammed al-Halboosi, said trucks should be able to start crossing Thursday, and that Iraqi forces were protecting the road to Baghdad. He admitted an agreement with a private international security firm, Olive Group, on securing and upgrading the road was still to be completed.
Officials said customs and border arrangements have been agreed together with security measures for the 550 kilometers (342 miles) of highway to the Iraqi capital, reportedly with the US security company employing a local force, according to Reuters.
Regaining control
Known as Karameh in Jordan and Turabil in Iraq, it is the only border crossing on the 180-kilometer border between northeast Jordan and western Iraq.
Over the last year, the Iraqi army has regained control of most of the towns in the desert province of Anbar. IS fighters are still in control of the towns of Rawa, Aanah and Al-Qaim, more than 200 kilometers north of Karameh-Turabil.
Over the last three years, Jordan’s exports to Iraq have dropped by more than two-thirds from a pre-2014 level of $1.4 billion (1.17 billion euros) a year.
Efforts have also been made to secure Iraq’s Basra port in the south to Jordan. The Red Sea port of Aqaba is a gateway for Iraqi imports from Europe.
Jordan is also hopeful its northern border with Syria will re-open in the coming months.
jm/kms (Reuters, AP, AFP)
Iraqi armed forces say they have managed to retake the center of Tal Afar from Daesh Takfiri terrorists as their battle to liberate the northern city enters a final stage.
“Units of the Counter-Terrorism Service liberated the Citadel and Basatin districts and raised the Iraqi flag on top of the citadel,” Commander of Tal Afar Liberation Operation Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah said in a statement.
The announcement came hours after Iraq’s Foreign said security forces had liberated 70 percent of Tal Afar from the control of Daesh.
“God willing the remaining part will be liberated soon,” Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said at a press conference with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and French Defense Minister Florence Parly, in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, reports coming out of Iraq suggest that the liberation of the city will be announced within hours.
Tal Afar is one of the last remaining Daesh strongholds in Iraq. The United Nations estimates that some 30,000 people remain trapped inside the city.
On August 20, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the commencement of a major offensive to retake the city of Tal Afar, near Mosul.
Mosul used to serve as Daesh’s last urban base in Iraq before its liberation in July.
Daesh unleashed a campaign of death and destruction in Iraq in 2014, seizing Mosul and declaring it as its so-called “capital” in the Middle Eastern country.
Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters have been leading a major operation to rid the country of the Takfiri elements.