High-level US State Dept. official meets with Kurdistan PM in Erbil
According to a KRG statement, the visiting official expressed the United States’ “readiness to develop American investment in the Kurdistan Region and his country’s continuous support towards the Peshmerga forces.”
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – David Schenker, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, was in Erbil on Wednesday to meet with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani to discuss the developing relationship between their respective governments, investment, and Erbil-Baghdad disputes.
According to a KRG statement, the visiting official expressed the United States’ “readiness to develop American investment in the Kurdistan Region and his country’s continuous support towards the Peshmerga forces.”
During a previous official trip to Erbil in January, Schenker said in an interview with Kurdistan 24 that the autonomous Kurdish region “has been an excellent partner for the United States in the war against terrorism.”
Read More: Asst Sec State for Near Eastern Affairs: the KRG is an ‘excellent partner’
US ambassador to Iraq Matthew Tueller also attended the meeting in which both sides discussed at length “the latest developments in Iraq and the wider region and ways to strengthen relations between the Kurdistan Region and the United States.”
Prime Minister Barzani highlighted ongoing negotiations between the Kurdistan Region and the federal government, stressing the need to “ensure the rights and financial dues of the Kurdistan Region in the federal budget,” calling on the United States “to play an observer role in solving the outstanding problems.”
Oil, disputed territories, and the KRG’s share of the national budget are but some of the more pressing issues between the regional and federal governments, most recently, Baghdad’s failure to disburse salaries for government workers in the Kurdistan Region, already suffering in an economic crisis made worse by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting collapse of world oil prices.
An official heading a KRG delegation charged with negotiating with Iraq’s federal government in Baghdad announced on Tuesday that the region is now committed to a recently passed but controversial budget law that includes provisions which in the past it has said were unconstitutional.
Read More: Kurdistan Region announces its commitment to federal budget deficit law
Since the fall of the former Iraqi regime in 2003, US officials have often taken an active role in mediating such negotiations.
Schenker served in the Pentagon during the Bush 43 administration, when he was Levant country director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, responsible for Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. He assumed his current position in June of last year.
Editing by John J. Catherine