PM Masrour Barzani seeks 'to strengthen' KRG-US partnership as he congratulates Joe Biden on inauguration

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Wednesday congratulated the newly-inaugurated US President, Joe Biden, and his female Vice President Kamala Harris, stating that he looks forward to strengthening the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) partnership with the US government.

Prime Minister Barzani tweeted his “warmest congratulations” to President Biden and VP Harris who were both sworn in on Wednesday during a ceremony in Washington DC. “I look forward to working closely with you [Biden administration] to strengthen the KRG-US partnership and restore much-needed certainty to the region,” he added.

Barzani previously congratulated Biden and Harris in early November 2020, after most major American media organizations tracking the US election results across the country had declared Biden the victor.

The leading Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader and former president of the Kurdistan Region, Masoud Barzani, also expressed his best wishes at the time, calling Biden his “friend.”

“I express my heartfelt congratulations to you, my friend, President-elect @JoeBiden for your victory,” Masoud Barzani said in a tweet. “I sincerely hope and pray that the free world under your leadership will witness more peace and prosperity.”

Read More: Super Tuesday: Joe Biden and the Kurds

Joe Biden has a long-standing friendship with the Kurds, both as a senator and later as Barack Obama’s vice president. In 2007, as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with Sam Brownback (R, Kansas), Biden sponsored a bipartisan, non-binding resolution calling for federalism in Iraq and the decentralization of authority in Baghdad.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany