Barzani: Cutting government staff salary is more dangerous than Halabja

05.04.2014 – Mewan Ahmed – BasNews, Erbil – London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat has quoted Kurdish President Massoud Barzani as saying that the current situation in Iraq is a result of Baghdad’s dictatorial stance and that if the US is not able to mediate between Baghdad and Erbil the situation will deteriorate.“If the US fails to mediate and stop Maliki then the Kurdistan Region will have no choice but to depend on its own resources.”President Barzani compared Baghdad’s withholding of government staff’s salary to the 1988 Halabja bombing, claiming that Maliki’s act is even more dangerous.

Barzani also spoke of the recent killing of university lecturer and journalist Mohamed Bidewi and Maliki’s claim that “blood can only be redeemed by blood” and pointed out that the killer should be sent to court and that the court has to make the final decision.

“If blood can only be redeemed by blood then we must look at the 400 university lecturers killed in the last years as well as the Kurdish genocide. We [Kurds] turned the revenge page a long time ago, why should we go back to that rhetoric?” asked Barzani. “Iraq will split and while we didn’t want this to happen, this is the reality and we have to deal with it. There is too much instability and terrorism in Iraq and there are many places that are not under government control where terrorists operate,” said Barzani. According to Barzani there is no willingness to accept democracy and different opinions in Iraq: “there is still a dictatorship that has resulted in Iraq’s constitution not being implemented as well as dividing Iraq’s people which has resulted in a lack of agreement between the country’s political parties.” Regarding the upcoming Iraqi elections Barzani emphasized that if all parties can agree on a determined agenda then change can happen and that Erbil does not have a personal problem with Maliki and would react in the same way towards anyone operating in the same way as the Iraqi prime minister.