ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Erbil and Baghdad are in the final stages of negotiations to reopen Kurdistan Region’s airports to international travel, the Iraqi prime minister said in an interview with a Germany media outlet during the Munich Security Conference. "We are in the last stage of discussions,” PM Haider al-Abadi told Deutsche Welle’s (DW) Arabic service in an interview published on Sunday. International flights in and out of Erbil and Sulaimani will resume soon, if Iraqi authority is imposed on the airports, he explained. The Kurdish and Iraqi governments have agreed in principle to lift the international flight ban imposed by Baghdad after Kurdistan voted for independence last September. They have agreed that the airports will operate under Iraqi Civil Aviation Law. The ban, which has been extended once, is due to expire on February 28. The flight ban is one of the many issues Erbil and Baghdad are struggling to resolve after Abadi sought to exert federal control over the autonomous region after the independence referendum. The two sides have reportedly made progress on the matter of paying the KRG’s civil salaries. Abadi reiterated to DW his concern about corruption. “We are determined to pay civil servants' salaries but there should be a true audit so that [the money] goes to the employee not [political] parties. This is a very dangerous but important issue," he said.
.webp&w=3840&q=75)
