US to maintain support for Iraq’s Kurdish region: Envoy

By Arif Yusuf

ERBIL, Iraq

The U.S. will maintain its military and humanitarian support for northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, according to a high-ranking U.S. official.

Brett McGurk, Washington’s envoy to an international coalition set up to fight the Daesh terrorist group, made the assertion at a Monday meeting with Nechervan Barzani, prime minister of northern Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

In a statement issued following the meeting, the KRG said McGurk had hailed the role played by both the regional government and its Peshmerga forces in “their recent victories against the terrorists”.

The U.S. envoy also reportedly praised the close cooperation between Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi army in fighting terrorism in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul.

Regional capital of the northern Nineveh province, Mosul remains the target of a months-long army offensive aimed at expelling Daesh terrorists from the city.

McGurk also reportedly described relations between the U.S. and the KRG as “strong”.

Barzani, for his part, hailed ongoing U.S. efforts to strengthen relations between the Kurdish region and Iraq’s central government in Baghdad and to resolve outstanding differences between them, according to the KRG statement.

The Kurdish region, Barzani noted, was currently hosting a “large number” of refugees and had treated more than 35,000 Iraqi soldiers injured in the ongoing Mosul campaign -- without, he said, any help from Baghdad.