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Iraqi ambassador to Moscow says ‘no blockade of Kurdistan’

All the charges with persecuting the Kurds that are addressed to the Iraqi government run counter to reality, the Iraqi Ambassador in Moscow, Haidar Mansour Hadi said

© AP Photo/Balint Szlanko

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/. All accusations of Kurds being persecuted by the Iraqi government run counter to reality and there is no blockade of Kurdistan by Baghdad, Iraqi Ambassador to Moscow, Haidar Mansour Hadi said in an exclusive interview with TASS on Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, there were a lot of false charges against the Iraqi government. One of the things he said is that the Iraqi state is punishing the Kurdish people and that is not true," Hadi specified. " Prime Minister Heidar al-Abadi made it clear: the Kurdish people are Iraq’s people."

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"There is free movements of goods, domestic flights are still open for operation and there hasn’t been any stoppage of domestic flights," he added. "There are flights from Baghdad to Erbil, from Baghdad [to] Sulaymaniyah, [from] Basra [to] Najaf, Sulaymaniyah. So there is no stoppage to that."

"The only suspension - and this is temporary - concerns international flights until control is transferred to the federal government," the ambassador said. "Then those flights will resume. So there is no blockade, and no siege of any kind."

"The Iraqi Government has obligations to the Kurdish people," the envoy noted. "So the problem, the tension we have is with the Kurdish leadership. Not with the Kurdish people, not even with Kurdish political parties, because according to our information there is a rift between Kurdish parties."

He indicated that, according to the information available to Baghdad, a number of Kurdish political parties felt rather skeptical about the referendum.

"Some political parties are skeptical about what's happening, they are skeptical about the referendum and the things that behind it," Hadi said. "They have fears of control by one party after the referendum."

"So there is a problem in the Kurdish political process," he pointed out. "This proves that not everyone in Kurdistan wants to be separated."

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