Masrour Barzani says Iraqi authorities should be grateful Kurds accepted federalism

Peregraf- Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) second deputy leader and Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said on Tuesday that Iraq’s authorities should be “grateful” that the Kurds accepted a federal system, asserting that the rights of the Kurdistan Region “are much greater than that.”

Speaking during his party’s election campaign for the Iraqi parliamentary elections scheduled for November 11, Barzani told supporters in Amedi that “our issue is not salaries; rather, opponents are trying to preoccupy us with the issue of salaries.”

He accused political rivals of conspiring to weaken the KDP and destabilize the Kurdistan Region. “Many alliances and collaborations were made, and many attempts were made to prevent salaries from reaching the Kurdistan Region,” he said. “In order to break the KDP, they did not care if Kurdistan was broken.”

Barzani also criticized conditions in other parts of Iraq, saying, “In the cities of Iraq, there are no hospitals, no schools, no security, no water, no electricity, and no services.”

His comments come amid continued disputes between Erbil and Baghdad over salary payments, oil and non-oil revenues, and the implementation of federalism, which defines the political and financial relationship between the two sides.