PUK to challenge election of Kurdistan parl't speaker: official
Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan's Mahmoud Khoshnaw on Monday said that the PUK will
challenge the election session of Kurdistan's parliament speaker and his two
deputies.
He
also expected that the government will not be formed.
"The Kurdistan Democratic Party has not complied with the
political agreement on February 5 concerning the province of Kirkuk, oil and
relations between the region and Baghdad," Khoshnaw said in a press
statement.
He
added that the Kurdish parties will not be able to complete the work of the government and parliament without the presence of the PUK.
Khoshnaw
said that "the next experiment will show that the Kurdish parties will not
be able to [form] the government."
The parliament in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region on Monday elected its first ever woman speaker as a temporary stop-gap while deep political rifts persist more than four months after legislative elections.
During the body's first session since the September polls, deputies chose Vala Farid from former regional leader Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
The head of the KDP bloc Haimim Hawrami said Farid was appointed "temporarily" until a deal can be reached with the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party on a permanent appointment.
Lawmakers from the PUK, the party of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, boycotted Monday's session.
The PUK has asked for more time to hash out thorny issues with its rival, including the leadership of the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
Iraqi Kurdistan has faced political instability since a September 2017 referendum for independence backfired after it was rejected by Baghdad and international powers.
Iraqi forces took back oil-rich regions from Kurdish control in the wake of the vote, dealing a blow to the authorities in the semi-autonomous region.