Lawmakers of Iraq’s Kurdistan region approve independence referendum

‘Iraqi Kurdish legislators of the country’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have approved a plan to hold a referendum on independence from Baghdad later this month, a contentious move spearheaded by regional President Masoud Barzani that has faced bitter opposition from the central government and several other countries, including neighboring Iran, Turkey and Syria.
In open defiance of Baghdad’s strong disapproval of the referendum, 65 out of the 68 Kurdish lawmakers present in the regional parliament on Friday voted in favor of the September 25 polls as opposition legislators boycotted the parliament’s first session in two years.
The plan for the non-binding Kurdish referendum was approved in the Iraqi city of Erbil, the capital of a northern province with the same name, in the 111-seat parliament consisting of Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraq’s former president, Jalal Talabani, and the independent Goran and Jamaa Islamiya opposition parties.’
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