MOSCOW, July 10 (RIA Novosti) - The Kurdish authorities have recalled their representatives from Iraq's Cabinet and suspended their participation in the country's government, The Associated Press wrote Thursday.
The announcement came after Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri Maliki, accused the Kurdish authorities of having ties with militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), now rebranded as the Islamic State, or IS, and hosting a Sunni militant base in the Kurdish capital Erbil.
"Such statements are meant to hide the big security fiasco by blaming others, and we announce our boycott of cabinet meetings," Deputy Prime Minister Roz Nouri Shawez was quoted by AP as saying.
At the beginning of July, Massoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, urged the parliament of the autonomous region to identify a date for a referendum on independence. Barzani called Baghdad's politics a failure that has allowed IS to approach Kurdish borders, and said Mailiki had "lost his balance" and "must apologize to the Iraqi people and leave his post."
Tensions between Kurdish authorities and central Iraq have been growing over the past few months after the Kurds decided to export oil without Baghdad's consent.
ISIS’ original aim was to establish a caliphate in the Sunni-majority regions of Iraq. Following its involvement in the Syrian conflict, its goal expanded to include controlling Sunni-majority areas in Syria. A caliphate was eventually proclaimed on June 29, with Abu Bakr Baghdadi named as its caliph, and the group was renamed the Islamic State.
