PM Barzani reiterates support for ongoing Kurdish dialogue in Syria

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said on Wednesday that his administration supports dialogue “everywhere,” but specifically in northern Syria, where ongoing US-sponsored Kurdish unity talks are aimed at resolving longstanding disputes between rival Kurdish parties.

“We believe that dialogue is the path to the solution of all problems, everywhere. However, this is a subject between them [the Syrian Kurdish parties],” Barzani said in a speech.

“The will and rights of all parties must be respected – one single party should not impose its decisions upon others because it leads the [local] authority,” he added, in a reference to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) that plays a dominant role in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

“Therefore, we support dialogue everywhere, to reach a healthy agreement that will serve the interests of the people from those areas,” the top Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) official concluded.

The PYD and the Kurdish National Council (KNC), the two major factions among Syrian Kurdish parties, renewed negotiations in early November in efforts to stand together as a united front after Turkey’s cross-border offensive in northern Syria in October 2019.

Current tensions between the two initially increased during the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, with the PYD playing a significant role in the establishment of the self-administration that has ruled northeastern Syria since.

The parties have yet to successfully cooperate, even after agreements they reached at talks held in the neighboring Kurdistan Region’s Duhok and Erbil provinces from 2012 and 2014 with support of the KRG, because the many provisions of the agreements were never effectively implemented.

The KNC and the PYD-aligned Kurdish National Unity Parties announced during a press conference in June that the talks would continue based on the 2014 Duhok Agreement and that party officials had agreed on a political agenda.

So far, however, no final agreement has been reached. Another agreement, made in the northern Syrian city of Qamishlo, will only be finalized when the two sides agreed on all points including politics, security, and decision-making in the local administration. So far, the two sides have only agreed on a basic political strategy and the formation of a so-called Supreme Kurdish Reference.

The United States has publically supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) initiative to unite the often disparate Kurdish parties in northern Syria. KRG leadership has also supported efforts to bring them together.

Salih Muslim, former co-chair and senior member of the PYD, told Kurdistan 24 in an interview on Monday that there are efforts to resume the talks after they had been temporarily put on hold.

“No one has left the table and there are efforts to continue the talks,” he explained. “There were some aspects that we could not change. Monitoring and intermediating parties were replaced or were on leave; one US official retired and another one went on leave. I presume that the parties will gather together again at a short time.”

“Let us not forget that there are agreements on the most critical issues; the political agenda and the Supreme Body are two main subjects that have been agreed to by both parties. Now, other phases of the process will be discussed soon,” he said.

Muslim stressed that the talks should be solely intended to “protect Kurdish rights, preserve their achievements, and reinforce their position; not to make them divided or weaker.”

Editing by John J. Catherine