KRG delegation arrives in Baghdad for financial talks
Shafaq News/ A delegation of financial experts from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) arrived in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss financial and accounting procedures with the Iraqi federal government.
The delegation, which includes representatives from the KRG's Ministry of Finance and Economy, Ministry of Natural Resources, and Board of Financial Supervision, will take part in a series of meetings with their counterparts from the Iraqi Ministry of Finance and the Iraqi Board of Financial Supervision.
The KRG and the Iraqi government have been at odds over a number of financial issues, including the region's oil revenues and the payment of civil servant salaries.
The delegation's visit is expected to last for several days, according to a statement by the region's Ministry of Finance.
Since the US-led invasions of Iraq in 2003, disputes between the KRG and the federal government of Iraq have gone through various phases and taken different forms, with critical milestones characterising and shaping an uneasy relationship. While Kurdistan voted for the 2005 Iraq constitution and accepted its status as a federal region within Iraq, it maintained and further consolidated its de facto semi-independence.
Twenty years since the regime change in Iraq, and 19 since the ratification of the 2005 constitution, the constitutional framework outlining relations between the KRG and the federal government of Iraq remains unfulfilled.
After a year of Iraq's longest government formation, the Iraqi parliament elected a new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in October 2022. Al-Sudani is backed by the Coordination Framework, a coalition of mainly Iran-backed Shiite parties that includes two former prime ministers, as well as Kurdish and Sunni parties. He has made progress by reaching an agreement with the KRG to address budget disputes and the management of natural resources. Revenue sharing, oil exportation, disputed territories, and the status of the Peshmerga have long been among major disputes between the two governments.
In February of 2022, Iraq's Federal Supreme Court deemed Kurdistan's oil and gas law "unconstitutional", to the dismay of the region's government. The top court also ruled against the the regional parliament's self-extension in May and declared that the term of the legislature had finished.
President Nechirvan Barzani and other KRG officials have repeatedly questioned the constitutionality of the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court following the anti-Kurdistan region rulings.
