Iraqi Minister of Interior Lt-Gen Abdul Amir al-Shammari discussed with officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) measures to secure the Turkish and Iranian borders, the Interior Ministry announced in a statement.
It said that based on the directives of the Prime Minister, an Iraqi delegation of the Interior Ministry, the Deputy Commander of Joint Operations, the Commander of the Border Guard, and several commanders and officers visited Erbil.
The meeting discussed the mechanism of controlling the border with Kurdish officials headed by the Minister of Interior and Chief of Staff of the Peshmerga Forces.
They also addressed oil and energy, and ways to constitutionally resolve the differences between the two parties.
The officials agreed that the border guards of the first region would control 26 checkpoints on the border, provided the Peshmerga forces supported them during this process.
The statement indicated that the necessary sums of money had been allocated to build the outposts, stressing that the Ministry of Interior is determined to control the borders with all neighboring countries.
The new mechanism comes for the first time since 2003 after the regional government called on the federal government to take a position on the ongoing Iranian bombardment of Iraqi territory under the pretext of the presence of Iranian opposition members in the targeted areas.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani agreed with the President of the Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, to set up a border control mechanism that includes the deployment of Iraqi border guards, a move that had been previously rejected by the region.
Border control operations were previously limited to the Peshmerga, and the federal government reassured the Kurdish side by restricting the volunteers within the border guard forces in the region to Kurdish citizens.
Meanwhile, a Kurdish government delegation began talks in Baghdad on contentious issues without any representative from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) accused its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, of seizing the resources of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, which the National Union denied.
National Union official Mahmoud Khoshnaw said the KDP accusations were an attempt to evade the origin of the problem, noting that the Union is trying to distribute revenues to the residents of the region fairly.
Khoshnaw indicated that non-oil revenues are very simple, but Erbil's oil revenues exceed $1.2 billion per month, which is the origin of disagreement between the two parties.
