Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Nechirvan Barzani said Saturday Iraq needs a political solution, not a military one.
The doors of Kurdistan are open for the residents of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul who were displaced by the recent massive attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Barzani said.
The Prime Minister made the comments at a joint press conference with Nikolay Mladenov, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Iraq and Head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), at his office in Irbil.
Barzani reaffirmed his government's resolve to combat terrorism, noting that he conveyed this stance to the central government in Baghdad.
"KRG has raised an initiative for helping Baghdad ahead of the Mosul events but the Baghdad government failed to respond. We are still part of Iraq," he reaffirmed.
Commenting on the recent deployment of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in some northern parts of Iraq, Barzani said: "These areas used to suffer from security vacuum due to the withdrawal of the Iraqi troops.
"The Peshmerga deployment aims to restore security and stability in these areas," he said, noting that the constitution of Kurdistan entitles these forces to protect the security of the semi-autonomous region.
"In the recent days we helped the Iraqi soldiers, who regrettably fled Mosul, to go back home," he added.
On his part, Mladenov said the fall of Iraqi cities into the hands of terrorist groups poses a serious threat to Iraq and the entire region.
To face up to this threat requires coordinated efforts by Irbil and Baghdad and solving the disputes among the political parties in Iraq, the UN envoy underscored.
The problems in Iraqi have entanglements with other countries in the region, so there is need for these countries to join forces and offer help to Iraq, Mladenov argued.
On Tuesday, June 10 the ISIL insurgents captured Mosul - Iraq's second largest city in the Ninewa Governorate, and seized the city of Tikrit city, Salah Ad-Deen Governorate, in the following day.
The conflict resulted in the displacement of about half a million people, according to international aid agency estimates.