MOSCOW, January 27. /TASS/. Iraq’s government and authorities of Iraqi Kurdistan, officially Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region, show resolve in seeking a mutually acceptable solution to the crisis, Iraq’s Ambassador to Russia Haidar Mansour Hadi said in an interview with TASS.
"I think the issue is on its way to be resolved," Hadi said adding the in the past month Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, had held two meetings in Baghdad and on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"They discussed most of the issues and I think there is an understanding by both sides," Hadi said. "Every issue has to be resolved within the constitution. I think there is a will by both sides issues must be resolved in accordance with the constitution."
The ambassador pointed out that the steps taken by the federal government after the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan were temporary.
"They will be temporary until we find the solution because the whole of Iraq has been run by the federal government," he said.
"I hope it depends on how the things are going. I think they are going positively so soon everything will be back to normal in Kurdistan," he added.
According to the diplomat, Iraqi Kurdistan might have a special scenario.
"It is an autonomous region which means we have to share managing of things like airports. Everything we have to do with Kurdistan has to be shared with the federal government. They cannot run everything by themselves because they are not a country," Hadi said.
"So everything, even oil exports … [and] airports, has to be run jointly with the Baghdad government," he noted. "Now the main part of these discussions is joint management of everything in Kurdistan. That is why these measures are taken to preserve the integrity of Iraq, are taken by the Iraqi government until we reach an agreement on this understanding between the two parties."
Iraq’s Kurdistan region held an independence referendum on September 25. The Kurdish independent electoral commission reported two days later that more than 90% voters said yes to independence from Iraq. Baghdad strongly opposes the referendum, calling it unconstitutional.
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq, also known as Iraqi Kurdistan, is an autonomous region in the north of Iraq, with its legal status fixed in the Iraqi constitution of 2005.