Delegation from iraqi government arrives in kurdistan region
DELEGATION FROM IRAQI GOVERNMENT ARRIVES IN KURDISTAN REGION
SULAIMANI – A delegation from the government of Iraq arrived in the Kurdistan Region on Wednesday (July 12) to meet with the Kurdish officials.
Iraqi government’s spokesman Assim Jihad told NRT on Wednesday that the delegation includes ministers of oil, agriculture, education and electricity as well as an official from finance ministry.
The delegation will hold talks with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Council of Ministers to discuss bilateral relations between Baghdad and Erbil, Jihad added.
The delegation’s visit came after KRG Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, said during a meeting with Brett McGurk, the U.S. Special Envoy to the Coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS), on July 9 that the region was ready to resolve the issues with Baghdad through dialogue.
Tensions between the KRG and the central government hit a high in 2015, after officials from both sides accused each other of failing to abide by the terms of an oil revenue sharing deal struck by officials in December 2014.
Officials from the Kurdistan Region and Baghdad signed the revenue-sharing agreement in December 2014 which would have seen the Iraqi federal government provide the region with 17 percent of the federal budget in return for oil exports amounting to 550,000 barrels per day (bpd).
That deal collapsed months later when the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ceased transfers to the Iraqi State Organization for Marketing Oil (SOMO) altogether. Baghdad in turn stopped the transfers of budget payments.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote