UNITED NATION: The UN Security Council on Thursday warned that a referendum on independence by Iraq’s Kurdistan region was potentially destabilizing, adding its weight to international opposition to the vote.
In a unanimous statement, the 15-member council said the referendum planned for Monday could hinder efforts to help refugees return home and weaken the military campaign against the Daesh group.
The move heightened pressure on Iraqi Kurd leaders to call off the vote after Turkey, Iran and Iraq urged them to abandon the plan that is also opposed by the United States.
Council members “expressed concern over the potentially destabilizing impact of the Kurdistan regional government’s plans to unilaterally hold a referendum next week,” said the statement.
“The planned referendum is scheduled to be held while counter-ISIL (Daesh) operations — in which Kurdish forces have played a critical role — are ongoing,” it added.
The council urged “dialogue and compromise” to address differences between the Iraqi government and the regional authorities.
Iraqi Kurds will vote on September 25 in the non-binding referendum on whether to declare independence in a region that has already been autonomous since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
The United States has warned it may not be able to help Iraq’s Kurds negotiate a better deal with the Iraqi government if they go ahead with an independence vote.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged the Iraqi Kurds to scrap the referendum and offered UN help to negotiate a new political deal between Baghdad and the Kurds.
UN envoy to Iraq, Jan Kubis, told Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani last week that the United Nations was ready to broker negotiations between the Kurds and Baghdad, according to a document obtained by AFP.
The negotiations would aim to reach a deal within two or three years on the “principles and arrangements” for future relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish region, the document said.
In return, Barzani’s administration would agree to postpone the referendum at least until the end of negotiations.
UN Security Council warns against holding Iraqi Kurd vote
UN Security Council warns against holding Iraqi Kurd vote
Drone strike kills 10, including 7 children, in Sudan’s El-Obeid: medical source
- An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone strike on the Sudanese city of El-Obeid killed 10 people including seven children on Monday, a medical source told AFP.
An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan, which the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to encircle for months.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the RSF, with some of the worst violence currently unfolding in Sudan’s strategic southern Kordofan region.
El-Obeid, the region’s main city, lies on a key crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum with the vast western Darfur region — where the army lost its last major position in October.
Following its victory in Darfur, the RSF has pushed through Kordofan, seeking to recapture Sudan’s central corridor and tightening its siege with its local allies around several army-held cities.
Hundreds of thousands face mass starvation across the region.
Last year, the army broke a paramilitary siege on El-Obeid, which the RSF has sought to encircle since.
Drone strikes on Sunday caused a power outage in the city but left no reports of casualties.
Last week, a coalition of armed groups allied with the army said they had retaken several towns south of El-Obeid, which according to a military source could “open up the road between El-Obeid and Dilling” — one of South Kordofan’s besieged cities.
Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people to flee internally and across borders.
It has also created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, and been described as a “war of atrocities” by the United Nations.
