EU parliament to hold conference on Iraqi Kurdistan

May 8th, 2017

Awake Goy

nsnbc : Anna Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament said Friday that the EU parliament has scheduled a conference about Iraq’s Kurdistan Autonomous Region and that Kurdistan Parliament Speaker Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq will be invited.

Before making her statement, MEP Anna Gomes has met a Kurdish delegation at the European Parliament building. The delegation included representatives of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Change Movement (Gorran), the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), and the Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG).

Gomes said the conference next month will be held to discuss ways to overcome the Kurdistan Region’s current situation and the party representatives will also be invited. “The current situation” referres here both to the conflict with the Islamic State as well as issues related to the planned referendum on independence, relations with the federal government in Baghdad, but also the disputes about the Kurdistan Regional Parliament.

Another “issue” implied in “the current situation” is the human rights situation in northern Iraq. Gomes noted that the European Parliament might take action and halt support if there were human rights violations in the Kurdistan Region. She added that this may happen in the same way action was taken against Turkey.

Kurdish representatives in Belgium resumed their meetings with European officials from parliament on Friday for the second week. Josef Weidenholzer, the Vice President of the European Parliament’s Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group, said on Wednesday he was surprised when informed by Kurdish lawmakers about the stalemate of Iraqi Kurdistan’s Parliament and President Masoud Barzani who unilaterally “extended his presidency”.

“We try to summon Massoud Barzani to the European Parliament to discuss the shutdown of Kurdistan Parliament,” Weidenholzer said during an interview with NRT. The crisis erupted after Massoud Barzani’s term as Kurdistan President ended on August 20, 2015 but refused to step down and remains unofficially in office. According to the law, Barzani cannot run for presidency anymore. But his clan-based party insists to extend his mandate.

The five main Kurdish parties, the KDP, PUK, Change (Gorran) Movement, KIU and KIG failed to reach an agreement on presidency post, due KDP members insist that Massoud Barzani should remain president of the region. Since October 2015 the Kurdistan parliament has closed after parliament’s Speaker Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq was prevented by Massoud Barzani forces from entering Erbil city on October 12, 2015 and Kurdistan PM Nechirvan Barzani has removed four members of his cabinet from the Change Movement and replaced them with KDP politicians.

CH/L – nsnbc 07.05.2017

Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/05/07/83733/