MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Iraqi Kurdistan government is ready for peace talks with the Iraqi government to resolve their differences, the representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Russia Hoshawi Babakr said Wednesday.
"This [the independence referendum] is an exclusively peaceful process, there's no threat from our side…in the future, we of course support sitting down at a negotiating table and peacefully resolving territorial disputes and the division of natural resources. The government of Iraqi Kurdistan is quite ready for this," Babakr told reporters during a press conference in Moscow.
Meanwhile, on Monday, the independence vote took place in Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan as well as in the disputed areas that are de jure controlled by Baghdad but under de facto control of Kurdish authorities. After 9 percent of votes had been counted, more than 93 percent of voters backed the independence of the region. Iraqi authorities said that the referendum was not legitimate and stressed that they would not conduct talks with the authorities of Iraqi Kurdistan on the issue of the vote.
