Baghdad: Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Sunday said he would defend the country’s Kurds from attack as internal and regional tensions soared over a controversial independence referendum.
“To our people in the Kurdistan region: we defend our Kurdish citizens as we defend all Iraqis and will not allow any attack on them,” he tweeted in English.
An Abadi adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the premier was referring to either an internal or external attack.
“We will not allow any harm to you and we will share our loaf of bread together,” Mr Abadi tweeted. Iran on Sunday said it would hold a joint military exercise with Iraq on Iran’s border with Iraqi Kurdistan in response to Monday’s “illegitimate referendum”.
Iraqi soldiers on Tuesday also took part in a Turkish military drill close to the Iraqi frontier. Washington has said it does not recognise the “unilateral” referendum.
Turkey, Iran Syria have rejected the vote for independence too. On Sunday, Mr Abadi explained Baghdad’s wish to better control all of Iraq’s oil revenues.
“Federal government control of oil revenues is in order to pay KR employee salaries in full and so that money will not go to the corrupt,” he tweeted.
