Shafaq News / The new Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, said that he will work to address the outstanding problems between Baghdad and Erbil in accordance with the constitution.

The governmental program presented by Al-Kadhimi presented to the parliament included a paragraph related to Kurdistan Region.

Where it says, “The federal government will work in cooperation with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to address outstanding problems and respect agreements between the two parties in accordance with the constitution, in order to achieve the supreme interests of the country and unify efforts in all areas.”

Al- Kadhimi obtained parliamentary confidence at a time when Baghdad’s relations with Kurdistan Region are experiencing an increasing crisis of confidence, while the Kurdish blocs in the Federal Parliament announced from the beginning of the road their support for Al- Kadhimi’s candidacy to form the government.

Several elements contributed to heating up the differences between Baghdad and Erbil. The most prominent of them is the decision of the Adel Abdul Mahdi government to cut the salaries of employees of Kurdistan Region for reasons that have remained so far shrouded in mystery, in violation of the agreements in effect between the two parties.

The decision to cut salaries came suddenly at a time when the Kurdish negotiating delegation is conducting intensive talks with the various government and party forces in Baghdad to settle files that hinder the development of relations between the two parties, which strengthened the questioning about the significance of pouring oil on fire in spite of the good relations that linked Kurdish leadership with Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

So, Kurdistan Region will watch Al- Kadhimi’s first positions on the salary file, but granting him confidence on the part of the Kurdish blocs implies that understandings have been made to settle this issue without additional tensions between the two parties.

As is known, the oil resource file is the most complicated file, as the Kurdish region contains 45 billion barrels of Iraqi reserves estimated at 150 billion barrels, and Kurdistan exports between 400 thousand and 500 thousand barrels per day. But formally, it must export 250,000 bpd of it through the state oil company SOMO, and pay the resulting revenue for the federal budget. In contrast, Baghdad has to pay about 12% of its federal budget to Erbil ($ 8.2 billion).

Perhaps all that Al-Kadhimi must do to turn this file is to activate the agreement that was concluded between Kurdistan and the government of Abdul-Mahdi in 2019, after the approved budget for 2019 included items indicating the re-disbursement of Kurdistan Region’s share that was not obtained in the budget of 2018, and paying  the salaries of the region’s employees, including Peshmerga forces.