ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq's Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein on Wednesday commended current relations between Baghdad and Erbil as "good", assured Kurdistan Region's civil servants that salaries for the months of September and August will be paid without a problem per agreements between the two governments, and said "no fundamental problem remaining."
Kurdish ministers at the Iraqi government, including Hussein, gathered with Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani on Monday, following a meeting of the Council of Ministers to discuss the latest developments in relations between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in the wake of the resumption of Kurdish oil exports after over two years and a half of halt.
“The meeting took place after the Council of Ministers’ meeting. We as Kurdish ministers had a meeting with the prime minister regarding the salary issue and Kurdistan’s oil issue," Hussein said. "Thankfully, the situation is good. We hope that the salary will be paid in the coming days.”
Foreign Minister Hussein added they held talks with Sudani concerning August and September salaries of Kurdish civil servants who have not yet been paid due to past disagreements over oil and non-oil revenues of the Kurdistan Region.
"There is no fundamental problem remaining. If there is a cash money problem, it is related to all of Iraq, not just Kurdistan," Hussein said.
The Kurdistan Region’s oil exports resumed earlier this month following a three-month agreement between Baghdad, Erbil and the IOCs. Exports were halted in March 2023 after a Paris-based arbitration court ruled that Ankara had violated a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to independently export oil beginning in 2014.
Despite the oil deal, salary payments to more than 1.2 million KRG public employees have not been made yet.
Baghdad had previously cited Erbil’s failure to deliver its share of oil to the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) and alleged the KRG had exceeded its 12.67 percent allocation in the 2025 federal budget. The crisis had been exacerbated by the ongoing halt in Kurdistan Region oil exports through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline, which had been offline since March 2023 following an international arbitration ruling.
Kurdish civil servants received their July pays in late August.
