He said that the referendum was held on the insistence of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Leader Massoud Barzani and stressed that he never regrets the support he made to the referendum.

Speaking on the anniversary of the decision to hold the referendum held in Iran's Kurdistan Region in 2017, Mallah Bakhtiar said he never regretted his stance on supporting the referendum and participating in it, according to SharPress news website.

The PUK leading official stressed that the referendum was a historic and conscientious document, adding that at that point and after assessing the conditions and Massoud Barzani’s insistence, they decided to set a date and hold the referendum.

He blamed then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for the events following the referendum and what he described as a crime and a new Arabization of the disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad.

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