UN has ‘no intention’ to engage with Kurdistan referendum



ERBIL, Kurdistan Region –

The United Nations will not support or oversee the referendum on independence that will take place in the Kurdistan Region and Kurdistani areas on September 25.

The UN’s office in Iraq and Electoral Assistance Office “has no intention to be engaged in any way or form as concerns the referendum,” it announced in a public statement on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the UN was responding to “inaccurate” news reports that its Iraq office, UNAMI, would “oversee, support or observe the referendum.”

UNAMI did state that they had met with the Kurdistan Region’s Independent High Electoral Commission about the vote.

Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the Kurdish presidency, told Rudaw on the weekend that they had met with a UN representative whose mandate is to “preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq.”

The Kurdish president, however, discussed the possibility of the UN overseeing the vote, “not in the meaning that they are in charge, but with the meaning that they become monitors in the process of referendum,” Hussein said.

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