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Southern Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani had a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Baghdad. Southern Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and his deputy Qûbad Talabani went to Baghdad on Saturday. Barzani, Talabani and KDP official Fûad Hisên have met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Baghdad. While details about the meeting are not clear, this is the first meeting held between the two sides after the controversial independence referendum of 25 September 2017. Before the referendum in Southern Kurdistan, Barzani had stated that “There is a bankrupt government in Baghdad”, referring to Abadi. Abadi had also...

Federal Kurdistan Region’s President Barzani has come to an agreement on 4 points with Iraqi Vice Presidents Allavi and Nuceyfi for a solution to the issues between Erbil and Baghdad. Federal Kurdistan Region’s President Masoud Barzani and Iraqi Vice Presidents Iyad Allavi and Usame Nuceyfi have reached an agreement on 4 points for a solution to the issues between Erbil and Baghdad. Federal Kurdistan Region Presidential Council Chairperson Fuad Hussein announced that the 3-party meeting has concluded with agreement on 4 points for a solution to the issues. In the statement, Hussein said all three parties have agreed on the...

Erdoğan continues with his insults and threats against KDP Leader Masoud Barzani. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave a speech at a meeting where he gathered a group of people from Northern Kurdistan he dubbed “opinion leaders”. Erdoğan reacted to KDP Leader Masoud Barzani because of the referendum and said: “You are governing over a state. Even if it is a state within a country, you are governing over a state. Your borders and air fields will be closed now, how are you going to get out? What kind of governance is this? You are done, before you even began.”...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said that total Rosneft investment in the Kurdistan Region is possibly around $3 billion after signing a preliminary Memorandum of Understanding with the Russian oil giant. The agreement signed last week in St. Petersburg will not come into effect for another at least three months, after it is ratified by the Kurdish government, he explained. During that time, the two sides will enter negotiations to put the final touches on the oil and gas agreement aimed at increasing oil exports to up to 1 million barrels. The deal also touches on...

Turkish President ErdoÄŸan and Southern Kurdistan intelligence official Masrour Barzani will be visiting the US on the same date. Turkish President Tayyip ErdoÄŸan is expected to visit the US on May 16, while KDP President Masoud BarzaniÂ’s son and Southern Kurdistan intelligence official Masrour Barzani has been reported to have a visit on the same date. Barzani is going to attend a program organized by a right-wing organization called the Heritage Foundation. Barzani will also be meeting with US officials to discuss the Mosul operation and the situation in Southern Kurdistan. ErdoÄŸanÂ’s US visit will be focused around seeking support...

The head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation Hakan Fidan was in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to meet with the region’s President Masoud Barzani in the city of Duhoq between 14-15 March, according to local news agency Roj News.The agency, which bases its story on ‘inside sources’, reported that Fidan met with both Masoud Barzani, who is also the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (and Deputy Leader of the KDP) Nechervan Barzani during his visit.The same sources said that the KDP’s relations with Turkey and a joint plan...

US senator said that United States would continue to help Peshmerga forces in providing air support, training and with provision of arms ERBIL, Iraq The Kurdistan Regional Government’s president, Masoud Barzani, met with U.S. Senator Jack Reed, who is ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Saturday, an official statement said. According to the official statement, Barzani and the U.S. senator discussed the progress of the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and U.S.- led coalition support for Peshmerga forces. During the visit, Barzani expressed his gratefulness to the U.S. senator and the American...

Iraqi Kurdistan is ready to defend Kurds living in Syria if it is found that they are being threatened by al Qaeda-linked fighters involved in the Syrian civil war, the president of the well-armed autonomous region said. In a letter posted online on Saturday, Masoud Barzani said he had directed Kurdish representatives to go to neighboring Syria to investigate news reports that the "terrorists of al Qaeda are attacking the civilian population and slaughtering innocent Kurdish women and children." His statement was a further sign of how Syria's two-year conflict is spilling over its borders and aggravating sectarian tensions in...

Americans hope that there will be more reform in Kurdistan, but there is a feeling that it is not the job of Americans to bring change. Iraqi Kurds have their own future in their hands, says resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin. He has written several articles about the domestic politics in the Middle-East. Rubin is also a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School and gave lectures at the Kurdish Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok (Iraqi Kurdistan). In the recent years he got a lot of attention for his critical articles in western media aimed...

Greetings from Mumbai (aka, “Bombay”). I’m here in the commercial capital of India and the site of the horrific terrorist attacks by Pakistani Islamic jihadists that killed more than 200 Indians at the famed Taj hotel, the Jewish “Chabad” center, and several other locations around this city. Today, I had the opportunity to visit several of these sites and pray for the survivors and for the families of those injured and killed. Currently, I’m on a two-week speaking tour throughout India with several dear friends, teaching Christian pastors, ministry leaders and lay leaders about “God’s love and plan for the...

Condoleezza Rice in Iraqi Kurdistan after Baghdad ERBIL (Iraq) - the American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Friday morning at Erbil, principal city of Iraqi Kurdistan, for discussions with the president of the autonomous area of Kurdistan Massoud Barzani, noted a journalist of AFP. Mrs. Rice had arrived Thursday to Iraq, in Baghdad, for a surprised visit intended to encourage the process of national reconciliation Iraqi, after visits in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. The American Secretary of State must go to London later in the course of the day to take part in the meeting of...

PRESIDENT BUSH: It's my honor to welcome President Barzani of the Kurdistan regional government of Iraq to the Oval Office. He's a man of courage; he's a man who has stood up to a tyrant. He wore this outfit because it wasn't all that long ago if he had worn this outfit and was captured by Saddam Hussein's thugs, he would have been killed for wearing it. He feels comfortable wearing it here because we're a free land, and he feels comfortable wearing it in his home country because Iraq is free. He wore this outfit because it wasn't all...

...The dilemma is that most of Iraq's oil wealth is found in areas claimed by Shiites and Kurds. And some leading Iraqi ethnic politicians have been asserting a right to keep all the oil revenue in their regions. Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani wants to control the northern city of Kirkuk, while Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is pushing for nearly complete control of the oil fields in the south. Thus strong regional governments, if allowed too much control over oil, risk leaving an Iraq with a rump Sunni province, and could create the perception of a legitimate grievance where none...

11/06/2005 TheKurdistani.com The president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Massoud Barzani, will be sworn in as Kurdistan’s president for the next four years in the Kurdistan Parliament, Hawler, south Kurdistan, according to radio and newspapers based in Kurdistan. The Hewal weekly today published on its first page that Barzani will be sworn in as Iraqi Kurdistan’s President for the next four years. The parliament will also approve the presidency bill.

...The argument for postponement, of course, is that the insurgency in Iraq will make holding elections difficult.... But Iraq's anti-democratic forces already seem to be operating at maximum capacity, and recent coalition operations are reducing their ranks as they've lost safe havens. The last thing these terrorists should see now is that their resort to violence can force postponement of the vote. That could lead to even more violence and another delay, and then another.... The danger is that any significant postponement will shift Shiite sentiment in the direction of more radical voices -- Moqtada al-Sadr's or others'. Moreover, if...

In this edition of Frontpage Interview, we have the privilege of being joined by Dr. Laurie Mylroie, one of the foremost American scholars on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In her book Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein´s Unfinished War against America, Dr. Mylroie provided substantial evidence implicating Saddam's involvement in four terrorist attacks: the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing; the 1995 bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the 1998 bombings of two African embassies. The author of the new book, Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department...

In a 1973 interview in his redoubt in the Zagros mountains where he was building a rebel army, the elder Barzani appealed to American leaders for help in fighting the Baathists who, he rightly predicted, would one day plunge the region into war after war. "We can become your 51st state and provide you with oil," he told me.

BAGHDAD - A council of up to nine Iraqis will probably lead the country’s still unformed interim government through the coming months, the American civil administrator said on Monday.Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner also said he expects the newly appointed L. Paul Bremer, former head of the State Department’s counter terrorism office, to take charge of the political process within the US postwar administration.“What you may see is as many as seven, eight, nine leaders working together to provide leadership,” Garner said. He added, though, that he didn’t know how the collective leadership would function specifically.The Iraqi leaders Garner referred...

KANILAN, Iraq - A U.S. airborne brigade in northern Iraq is preparing to move south toward a ridge of hills northeast of Baghdad, backed by U.S. air power, special operations forces and tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas, according to U.S. and opposition officials. Some of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's combat forces left their base in the north Wednesday on armed patrols to probe for Iraqi forces in the direction of the oil-rich northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. Another battalion was expected to do the same soon. But the officials said the withdrawal of Iraqi Republican Guard...

The Kurdish Ghost By WILLIAM SAFIRE Mullah Mustafa Barzani was a leader of the 20 million Kurdish people ? the world's largest nation without a country ? through much of the 20th century. Betrayed in the 1970's by the Shah of Iran and the U.S. ("covert action should not be confused with missionary work"), the dying warrior was brought to a C.I.A. safe house in Virginia, where we had long talks before his death. Because Iraqi Kurds under belated U.S. air protection have developed a democracy that will be a model for post-Saddam Iraq, my friend Mullah Mustafa granted me...