MESOP: SALIH MUSLIM A TRAITOR TO THE KURDS & A TOOL IN TEHRANS HAND – Syria Kurdish chief reportedly in secret Iraq deal

An Iraqi Kurdish outlet said that Saleh Muslim met in Baghdad with Haidar al-Abadi.

18 June 2015 – NowMedia- BEIRUT – The leader of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) has secretly visited Baghdad to reach a political and military understanding with the Iraqi government, according to a report in an Iraqi Kurdish outlet.

Bas News reported Tuesday that PYD co-chief Saleh Muslim traveled to Cairo with two party officials the same day that Iraqi Premier Haidar al-Abadi instructed his country’s embassy in Egypt to quickly issue three visas. The same day the Kurdish political leader and his two companions arrived in Baghdad, where they “met in secret with Abadi” and several other Iraqi officials connected to the Iraqi PM, the outlet—which is close to a party that rivals the PYD—quoted a “well-informed source in Baghad” as saying.

According to the source, Muslim and Abadi discussed a number of issues, “the most important of which was strengthening the relationship between the Iraqi government and the PYD, in exchange for delivery of the Iraqi aid to the Assad regime by the latter.” It was also agreed that “PYD forces would strengthen their control over certain border areas between the two sides and for their part the Popular Mobilization militias would try to reach those areas on the Iraqi side, in order for the PYD to deliver the Iraqi aid to the Assad regime.” The source also said that “both sides agreed on the issue of intensifying pressure on the [Iraqi] Kurdistan region in the coming period, both politically and in terms of media coverage, so as to prompt the region’s leadership to be flexible in dealings with the Iraqi government and the PYD.”Thee PYD’s representative in Iraqi Kurdistan, Sherzad Yazidi, responded to the report by saying by saying that “all of these accusations are fabricated.”

Kurdish fault-lines

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region (KRG) has had tense ties with the country’s central government, with disagreements between the two ranging over budget issues, the development of oil resources and the potential of direct US armament to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

The president of Iraq’s Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, also has frayed relations with the PYD. His Kurdistan Democratic Party (PYD)—which is close to Bas News—opposes its Syrian Kurdish counterpart over the status of the Yazidi-populated Sinjar region in western Kurdistan.

The KRG considers Sinjar as being under its administrative control, and in December launched an offensive to push back ISIS from the area after it was overrun by the Islamist militants in the fall of 2014. Following the collapse of ISIS lines, Yazidi officials in Sinjar met to form an autonomous administrative council in January, a move blasted by KRG as allowing the PYD to expand its authority into Iraq. In early April, KRG authorities arrested a Yazidi militia leader who had reportedly been attempting to organize his fighting force under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization militias run by Baghdad, and not the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga.

PYD opponent’s accusations

A member of the KDP’s Syria branch and a party representative in the Kurdistan region, Nuri Primo, accused the PYD of colluding with the Syrian regime, despite growing differences between Damascus and Syria’s Kurds.

“The relationship between the Abadi government as well as between the PYD and the Syrian regime is not hidden to anyone; in fact it is an openly declared relationship,” the political opponent of the PYD told Bas News. “Muslim’s meeting with Abadi was expected and the goal was to discuss the implementation of their joint agendas with regard to the Kurdistan region in order to serve the interests of the Syrian regime and the personal interests of the two sides.”

Primo said that “the PYD is currently becoming the link connecting Iraq and the Syrian regime; that the two actors damage the interests of Kurds and Kurdistan; and that they are using the party to serve their interests.”

Despite Primo’s statements, senior officials in Syria’s de-facto autonomous Kurdish areas have spoken out against the Bashar al-Assad regime while both sides have also fought each other in northern Syria. Earlier in the week, members of the PYD’s Asayesh internal security forces battled Syrian regime-affiliated militias in the border town of Qamishli, while YPG units also fought National Defense Force militias in the northeastern provincial capital of Hasakeh in January. The Syrian regime has kept up public appearances of maintaining control over the northeastern Syrian region, even as the Kurds have declared autonomy amid tense non-aggression agreements with the remaining Syrian regime forces in the area. https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565450-syria-kurdish-chief-reportedly-in-secret-iraq-deal