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John Kerry visits Iraq's Kurdish region

THE president of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region hinted today that he would be unwilling to give up land won during battles with jihadist fighters.

Massoud Barzani told visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Ibril: “We are facing a new reality and a new Iraq.”

Mr Kerry is pushing the Baghdad government to give more powers to Iraq’s minority Sunnis and Kurds in a bid to strengthen the fight against the al-Qaida spinoff Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis).

But Mr Barzani told Mr Kerry that Kurds are seeking “a solution for the crisis that we have witnessed,” and it was likely that the solutions he was considering were far different to those of Mr Kerry.

Just prior to the meeting, the Kurdish president said: “We are living in a different era.

“During the last 10 years we did everything in our ability… to build a new democratic Iraq, but unfortunately the experience has not been successful.

“The time is here for the Kurdistan people to determine their future and the decision of the people is what we are going to uphold.”

Mr Kerry has repeatedly said that it’s up to Iraqis — not the US or other nations — to determine their politics. 

But he also needs co-operation from the significant Kurdish forces to bolster the failing Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki.

Mr Kerry said at the start of the hour-long meeting that Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been “really critical” in helping to restrain the Isis advance in the absence of the crumbling Iraqi army.

He claimed that Iraqi leaders must “produce the broad-based, inclusive government that all the Iraqis I have talked to are demanding.”

The US believes a new power-sharing agreement in Baghdad would soothe anger directed at the majority Shi’ite government that has fuelled Isis.

But Mr Barzani has feuded with Mr Maliki for years, most recently over the Kurdish regional government’s decision to export oil through Turkey without giving Baghdad a share of the profits.

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