In response the PUK and the Change movement started to solicit support for their plan from smaller Iraqi Kurdish parties, including the region’s Islamic parties.
“The new agreement has some good ideas in it and could serve as a starting point for dialogue between the parties so that eventually they could reconcile,” Omar Mohammed, a senior member of the Kurdistan Islamic Union, told NIQASH. But Mohammed also admitted that if things went in the opposite direction, the agreement could further pollute Iraqi Kurdish politics.
“The timing of the agreement wasn’t very good,” he concedes, “it came when there were no positive signals between the two parties.”
Kani confirms this, saying, “we are not ready to receive any joint delegations from the PUK and the Change movement to discuss this agreement”.
As for the PUK itself, this political party appears to be stuck in the middle between two apparently implacable foes. At one stage the PUK and the KDP were at war with one another, fighting for control of the Kurdish region. To resolve this, the two parties signed a power-sharing deal in 2007 and the question remains as to what will become of this, given the PUK’s new deal with the Change movement.
A senior politician in the PUK party, Harem Kamal Agha, told NIQASH that the PUK has been trying to broker a peace between the two opposing parties for some time. His party had also approached the KDP with a deal but this was rejected, he noted.
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