Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani accuses Iraqi PM of leading country to ‘dictatorship’.

Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani accuses Iraqi PM of leading country to ‘dictatorship’.(AlArabia).President of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani criticized Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday and accused him of dragging the country to “dictatorship” and into the “abyss.”
“There is an attempt to establish a one-million strong army whose loyalty is only to a single person”“ Barzani said” referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki.
In a speech marking the traditional Persian new year holiday, Barzani repeated a litany of Kurdish complaints, some of them specifically directed against Maliki for consolidating his hold on power in Baghdad.
“Where in the world can the same person be the prime minister, the chief of staff of the armed forces, the minister of defense, the minister of interior, the chief of intelligence and the head of the national security council?” he said, referring to powerful posts that Maliki has yet to allocate under a power-sharing agreement.
Barzani appeared to raise the stakes, with language suggesting he could seek a referendum of some kind on the Kurdish region's relations with Baghdad - although he stopped far short of breaking a taboo by making explicit reference to independence.“It is time to say enough is enough,” Barzani said in an official translation of his remarks on his website.
“The current status of affairs in unacceptable to us and I call on all Iraqi political leaders to urgently try and find a solution - otherwise we will return to our people and will decide on whatever course of action that our people deem appropriate.”
The comments could be seen as a veiled code for seeking independence, since most Kurds say they would vote to secede from Iraq if given a chance.The Kurdish region has flourished as the only part of Iraq to have avoided the extreme violence that followed the U.S.-British invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.Barzani's government receives a fixed percentage of Iraq's oil export wealth and maintains its own security forces.
While Baghdad and the rest of Iraq still have electricity for just a few hours a day and have barely seen even the most basic reconstruction after decades of sanctions and war, the Kurdish region is enjoying a massive building boom. Barzani rules with a firm grip.
He accused the central government of refusing to resolve a territorial dispute over the oil city of Kirkuk, which is outside the Kurdish region but regarded by Kurds as their historical homeland.
Funds due from the central government for Kurdish security forces have been “embezzled,” Barzani said. The central government was opposing Kurdish oil deals to prevent the Kurds from reaching their own economic potential.
“Iraq is facing a serious crisis. We have tried our utmost to prevent Iraq from descending into a sectarian conflict and we have consistently avoided taking sides in this conflict,” he said in Tuesday's speech.“It is very unfortunate that a small number of people in Baghdad have imposed themselves and monopolized power.”Hmmmm.......Obama: If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!Read the full story here.