During a press conference about the difficult relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraq’s federal government, Harsin said that officials from the KDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) do not have power over institutions and administrative functions areas in which the other is in control.
“Kurdistan Region President [Nechirvan Barzani] has no control over the Sulaimani and Garmian Asayish and [KRG Deputy Prime Minister] Kaka Qubad Talabani has no control over the Zeravani and Erbil and Duhok police, so why are we deceiving ourselves?” he said.
Those who are loyal to the Kurdistan Region should tell the KDP and the PUK to unite and make the region one administration, he added.
Speaking about the difficulties in reaching a budget agreement with Baghdad, Harsin rhetorically asked how a nation can reach agreement with a third party while it disagrees internally with itself.
“If we want this Kurdistan Region to remain and not be lost, we, the [KDP] and the [PUK], have to trust each other,” he said.
“Baghdad is not important, we are important.”
PUK lawmaker in the Council of Representatives Rezan Sheikh Dler said during the same press conference that the federal government does not have any problem with the Region, arguing that “it is us that cannot govern our own Region.”
“The federal government does not have any role in creating the crisis in the Region. It has not made the Region indebted. It has not spread corruption within the Region and it has not signed a contract with Turkey."
“We have created the Region’s crisis entirely by ourselves,” she said.
Dler said the locally pumped oil has not been of any benefit to the Region since the 2013, when former Minister of Natural Resources Ashty Hawrami and the previous government embarked on an independent export policy.
“This is the consequence of that policy,” she said, referring to the Region’s financial crisis and the budget disputes with Baghdad.
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