Pope Francis meets Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani at the Apostolic Palace on March 2, 2015 in Vatican City, Vatican. File Photo: HO/AFP
ishtartv.com - rudaw.net
12-1-2017
VATICAN
CITY — Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and Pope Francis have
concluded their meeting at the Holy See on Friday.
Their
meeting was a short one, but they touched on the current situation in the
Kurdistan Region, relations with Baghdad, and the refugees and IDPs being
hosted in the Region, Fuad Hussein, chief of staff of the Kurdistan Region
Presidency, told Rudaw.
"Barzani in general put forward the economic, social and political
conditions and relations with Baghdad. They were all discussed," Hussein
added.
“The Pope asked a number of questions with respect to the situations we were
going through,” he explained, with the pontiff asking about what the Vatican
could do in terms of relations with Iraq and internationally.
“More importantly, the role Vatican could play in helping the Kurdistan Region
in order to resolve [its issues] with Baghdad in a peaceful way, through talks
and dialogue was discussed in detail,” Hussein explained.
He said that the KRG visits to European countries like France and Germany
demonstrate to Iraq that Baghdad cannot put the Kurdistan Region at bay and
disconnect it from the outside world.
Baghdad’s embargo on the KRG “is being shattered bit by bit,” he said. “There
is going to be even more meetings, visits and support.”
Rulers in Baghdad will eventually understand “the politics they are pursuing
against the Kurdistan Region is not right.”
Addressing a recent visit of three opposition parties to Baghdad, Hussein said
that “genuine” talks must be held with a representative from the KRG, because
any agreement that is ultimately made, must be “reached between the KRG and the
Iraqi government.”
He was optimistic that the long anticipated dialogue “will start in the end,”
preferably before Iraqi elections in May.
PM Barzani is also expected to meet with Vatican's Secretary for Relations with
States Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's de facto foreign minister,
Rudaw’s correspondent in Rome reported.
Barzani
last met
with Pope Francis in Vatican City in March 2015.
At
the time, the Kurdish premier said the Pope has a deep understanding of the
situation in Iraq and of refugees made homeless by the ISIS war, adding that
the pontiff had expressed the Vatican’s support for the Kurdish government.
Prior
to the rise of ISIS in 2014, there were about 400,000 Christians in Iraq of
various Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriacs and Armenian sects.
Barzani's
delegation includes Fuad Hussein, who is the chief of staff of Kurdistan
Region's presidency, as well as Rezan Qadir, the KRG representative to Italy.
Minority
communities like Shabaks, Yezidis, Christians, and Kakais were largely
displaced in places like Baghdad, the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, and
northern Syria as ISIS swept across Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The
Iraqi government declared ISIS defeated in December 2017. Iraqi, Kurdish, and
international security forces are reporting nearly daily of on-going
counter-ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria.
As
of early 2018, according to local pan-Christian groups, about 100,000
Christians are sheltered in the Kurdistan Region and 100,000 returnees to
disputed or Kurdistani areas claimed by both Baghdad and Erbil.
“Radical
ideologies, extremist lectures, wars and massacres especially against our
Yezidi and Christian brothers and sisters have not affected this culture,”
Barzani said in December 2016 at the height of the ISIS war. “But it has caused
hesitation, fear, a deep wound and pain and posed a serious threat to the
culture of coexistence in Kurdistan and Iraq.
The Vatican said in a November 2017 statement that its wants to allow
Christians who were forced to flee the Iraqi province of Nineveh "to
finally return to their roots and recover their dignity."
According to KRG Joint Crisis Coordination Centre 850 families, 5,100
individuals fled Nineveh Plain since the incursion of Iranian-backed Shiite
Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary fighters who were supporting the Iraqi Army's
control of disputed or Kurdistani areas claimed by Baghdad and Erbil.
More than 100 churches and monasteries in Mosul alone had been demolished by
ISIS militants since 2014. Elsewhere in the country, there was the 2010 October
attack on the Assyrian Church in Baghdad that killed over 50 people, including
many worshipers.
Pope Francis received US President Donald Trump for their first official
meeting in May 2017.
A Vatican statement following the meeting highlighted that both made
"particular reference to the situation in the Middle East and the
protection of Christian communities."
According to 1987 Iraqi census, 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq.
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