Iraqi Parliament Adopts Year's Budget Amid Protests of Kurds

CAIRO (Sputnik) – The Iraqi parliament adopted amendments to the country’s budget for 2018 despite protests of the Kurdish lawmakers, member of the Iraqi parliament’s finance committee Masud Haidar said.

According to Haidar, the amendments were adopted by the majority of votes with 176 lawmakers having participated in the parliament’s session.

“A total of 65 Kurdish lawmakers left the session, dedicated to the vote on the new budget, showing their protest against several provisions, the main of them is reduction of Kurdistan’s share [in Iraqi's budget] from 17 percent to 12.6 percent,” Haidar said on late Saturday.

Lawmaker Ashwaq Jaf told Sputnik that Kurdistan's political blocs decided to demand the regional authorities to withdraw from the talks with Baghdad after the parliament adopted the country’s budget without the Kurds.

On September 25, Iraqi Kurdistan held an independence referendum, with around 93 percent of the voters supporting secession from Iraq. Baghdad called the referendum illegal and refused to recognize its results. In response, Iraq imposed sanctions on the Kurdish regional government and launched a military operation in the territories disputed between Erbil and Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Baghdad and Erbil have launched reconciliation negotiations, trying to avoid further escalation of tensed relations.