Iraq Kurds complete unification of ministries

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — The two main Kurdish parties have completed the unification of their government in the autonomous region of northern Iraq, one of the main groups announced on Tuesday.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said the ministry for the peshmerga, the Kurdish fighting force, would be headed by Jaafar Mustafa of the PUK under an accord with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The interior ministry will remain with Massud Barzani's KDP and the finance ministry goes to the PUK's Sheikh Bayez, completing an agreement for a joint government reached in 2005 but left incomplete with the three gaps, it said.

Two years after Western intervention released Iraqi Kurdistan from the control of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baghdad regime following its defeat in the 1991 Gulf conflict over Kuwait, the two parties fought a war in which thousands died before a 1996 ceasefire.

For several years, the rival groups had their separate administrations in northern Iraq.

Under their power-sharing arrangements, PUK leader Talabani is Iraqi president while Barzani is president of the Kurdish regional government based in the northern city of Arbil.
AFP