Original Article by Rudaw.
Speaker of the Council of Representative, Dr. Salim al-Jabouri, spoke at the annual MERI conference in Erbil on Wednesday.
The speaker of Iraqi Parliament urged the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to remain committed to a federal Iraq.
Recognizing the importance of the KRG in attracting foreign investment and its role in sheltering an estimated 1.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs), Jabouri appealed for the KRG to consider their mutual interests and remain committed to a federal Iraq.
“If Kurdistan region gets weaker, this weakens Iraq as a whole,” he said. “From this perspective we ask the KRG leaders to overcome their differences and consider our common interests. Overcoming ISIS doesn't depend just on military aspects, but political too.”
Reform requires a spirit of solidarity, Jabouri said, in which all parties of Iraq thrive. In this regard, the Iraqi constitution remained an important document to steer such reform. “We cannot just improvise,” he said.
Whether the Kurdistan region would remain within Iraq was a “purely Kurdish decision,” he said. He added, however, that independence should not be played as a card to pass Kurdish problems along to Baghdad.
“If we want to co-exist we need to identify our mutual commitments,” he said. “Iraq needs a new establishing vision.”
Such a vision was within reach, Jabouri insisted. “We're not the first country to face this kind of challenge and we won't be the last. There is a desire to reform and there are the requisite economic resources, which, if used properly, will allow us to overcome these difficulties
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