ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Russia’s foreign minister on Saturday urged the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to find compromises as they engage in dialogue over long-standing points of dispute.
“We welcome dialogue between the government of Iraq and Kurdistan,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Rudaw’s Diyar Kurda on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City.
“When I was in Iraq last time, I traveled to Erbil as well. It seemed that the overall sentiment in Baghdad and Erbil was focused on addressing problems,” he said. “The government and Kurdistan need to find compromises.”
Iraq’s Council of Ministers on Sunday agreed to send the KRG a loan of 2.1 trillion Iraqi dinars to pay the salaries of its civil servants. The amount will be paid in three equal installments and will cover the payroll for September, October, and November.
Repayment of the loan will come out of the KRG’s share of the 2023 federal budget, and 2024 if necessary. On Sunday, the KRG announced that the first installment of 700 billion dinars will be used to pay the July salaries of public employees who have not received their wages for the past two months.
The Iraqi government announced the loan after Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani went to Baghdad to lobby for the Region’s financial entitlements.
Finances and oil sales are a frequent point of contention between Erbil and Baghdad. Iraq’s three-year budget passed in June, which includes a record $152 billion in spending, 12.6 percent of that going to the Kurdistan Region, was supposed to be a step towards resolving the dispute, but both governments have accused the other of not abiding by the budget law.
Economic woes in the Kurdistan Region have worsened in recent months after Turkey suspended the flow of Kurdish crude oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to its Ceyhan port in March following a ruling from a Paris arbitration court, causing the KRG billions of dollars in losses.
Teachers and health care workers in Sulaimani are on strike over unpaid wages.
The Russian foreign minister also said that Russian companies are still operating in Iraq and they are currently looking for a way to make “Russian-Iraqi relations independent from whoever may be in Washington or any other capital.”
