Kurdish Party Doubts Independence Vote Will Be Canceled Amid Iraqi Court Ruling

MOSCOW (Sputnik) —  A representative of the KDP in Moscow told Sputnik on Monday that the referendum will unlikely be canceled as all the preparations for the vote had already been finalized.

The statement comes after Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court issued a ruling on the suspension of the independence referendum in the region.

According to the KDP representative, Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, did not want to meet with the representatives of foreign states, who attempted to convince him to postpone the referendum. But when the talks took place, Barzani "did not receive any real alternatives."

"Kurdistan and Iraq have little left in common. Our lawmakers have left the parliament in Baghdad, the Iraqi army is not in Kurdistan now. The reality is like that," Babakr explained.

In June, Barzani set September 25 as the date for a referendum on the independence of the autonomous region of Iraq. The announced referendum has been criticized by Iraq and a number of other countries. For example, Turkey and Iran expressed a common view that a referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan could provoke increased tensions in the region, including separatism among their own respective Kurdish populations, and called for the vote to be abandoned.

Kurdistan’s authorities have repeatedly raised the issue of independence since 2005 when the Iraqi Constitution recognized the region as an autonomous entity.