Iraq's Kurds said Sunday they will hold an independence referendum "whatever the risk and price", despite threats of retaliation from the country's central government on the eve of the vote.

Massud Barzani, the leader of oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan, said his people's partnership with Baghdad had failed and that the plebiscite would proceed as planned on Monday.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, speaking on television soon after, threatened to take the "necessary measures" to protect Iraqi unity, and his government urged all countries to deal only with it on oil transactions.

At a news conference in Arbil, capital of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the country, Barzani urged his people to turn out and vote.

"The partnership with Baghdad has failed and we will not return to it," the Kurdish leader said.

Barzani has resisted pressure from Baghdad, neighbouring states and Washington to call off the non-binding referendum and negotiate a new deal.

"The referendum is not for defining borders or imposing a fait accompli. We want a dialogue with Baghdad to resolve the problems, and the dialogue can last one or two years," Barzani said of disputed zones such as oil-rich Kirkuk and over oil exports.

In his televised address, Abadi said that taking a unilateral decision to stage a referendum affected both Iraqi and regional security, and was "unconstitutional and against civil peace".

"We will take the necessary measures to preserve the unity of the country," the prime minister said, without elaborating.

"Iraq will remain for all Iraqis. We will not allow it to become a possession of one or the other, and we will not permit anyone to play with Iraq and not pay the consequences."

In a statement late Sunday, Iraqi President Fuad Massum, who himself is Kurdish, criticised Barzani's "unilateral decision" to hold the referendum.

But Massum also called on leaders in Arbil and Baghdad to avoid any escalation and to reject any "provocative and extremist positions".

Iraq's neighbours Iran and Turkey strongly oppose the referendum, as both have their own Kurdish minorities and fear the vote will stoke separatist aspirations at home.

Tehran upped the pressure on Sunday, saying it had blocked all flights to and from Kurdistan at Baghdad's request.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani spoke about the referendum in a telephone call, Turkish presidential sources said late Sunday.

They pointed to the "chaos" the vote would bring to the region while stressing the "great importance" they attached to Iraq's territorial integrity.

Washington and many Western countries had called for the vote to be postponed or cancelled, saying it would hamper the fight against the Islamic State group (IS).

But in Arbil, Barzani's political heartland, Kurdish flags were flying everywhere.

Most in the city said they would vote, but some also feared the possible consequences.

"We look forward to hearing what the situation will be after September 25, as most Kurds will vote for independence to fulfil our dream of an independent state," said labourer Ahmad Souleiman, 30.

"What we're afraid of is that our enemies have evil intentions towards us."

Some five million Kurds are expected to vote in the three provinces that have since 2003 formed the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan but also in territories disputed with Baghdad such as oil-rich Kirkuk province.

While an independent homeland has long been an aspiration in the Kurdish diaspora, the ethnic group's two main parties in Iraq differ on how to make it a reality.

Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, a former president of Iraq, are at opposite ends of the spectrum politically on the issue.

The PUK has backed an alternative plan put forward by the United Nations, and supported by Washington, for immediate negotiations on future relations in exchange for dropping the referendum.

In Sulaimaniyah, the PUK-controlled second city of the autonomous Kurdish region, enthusiasm for the vote was muted.

"I will vote 'no' tomorrow because I'm afraid of an embargo on the region, of civil war with the Hashed al-Shaabi (grouping of Shiite paramilitaries), and waking up and seeing Turkish soldiers patrolling," said 30-year-old teacher Kamiran Anwar.

The most sensitive sticking point is Kirkuk where there was a run on food supplies in the city Saturday as residents stocked up in case of post-referendum trouble.

Home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, Kirkuk is disputed between the federal government and Iraq's Kurds who say it is historically theirs.

They argue that late dictator Saddam Hussein's forces had chased the city's Kurdish residents and replaced them with Arabs.

Threats are growing inside Iraq against the Kurdish move.

"There will be a high price to pay by those who organised this referendum, a provocation aimed at destroying relations between Arabs and Kurds," said Faleh al-Fayad, leader of the Hashed al-Shaabi units created in 2014 to fight IS.

"As soon as the referendum takes place there will be a legal and constitutional reaction."</s>But the vote has stirred such anger among neighbours that the Kurds may find themselves in a more difficult position as a result

Leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) billed the non-binding referendum as an exercise in self-determination and said they will not actually make a real push for statehood.

Instead, they are looking to maintain their influence with Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara after having cooperated with them in the battle against the Islamic State armed group.

“The referendum for them is a bargaining chip, because it’s very difficult to negotiate with many different states when you are a region of provinces,” says Renad Mansour, research fellow with Chatham House.

“They want to make claims to disputed territory, and they want to continue along their pursuit of becoming an oil and gas producer in the region.”

However, the referendum has appeared to upset anyone they may wish to hold talks.

“The problem moving forward is that all these actors who were fighting together against Isis are now squabbling with each other over this issue,” Mansour says.

“Because it’s landlocked, the Kurdistan region needs friends, and all of its neighbours along its borders reject it vehemently. Really the biggest impact of this referendum this far has been increased antagonisms by all sides.”

Turkey and Iran watching for next moves

As they watching the KRG for what steps it decides to take, both Turkey and Iran are letting the Kurdish leadership known that this referendum hasn’t won them any favours.

“This referendum brought Iran, Turkey and the Baghdad government into acting in coordination,” notes Ege Seçkin, political analyst at IHS Country Risk. “Whereas we’ve seen in previous years, those three sides, particularly Turkey versus Iran and Turkey versus the Baghdad government, the relations had been very strained.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatening to block the flow of oil from northern Iraq and even to take military action.

“Looking at statements made by KRG officials, it seems they are actually surprised by how angry the Turks are,” Seçkin says. “And that increases the likelihood that we might in the next few weeks see some concrete measure by Turkey.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said late Monday that his government would not dialogue about the results of what it considers an unconstitutional referendum.

“Abadi is really reluctant to give any concessions whatsoever to the Kurds, for fear that that might jeopardise his own prospects for surviving politically,” says Seçkin.

“Iraqi parliamentary elections are coming in April 2018, and they will to a great extent be a face-off between Abadi and the hard-line alternatives, the likes of former PM [Nouri] al-Maliki and so forth.”

However, the presence of Kurdish forces in and around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk following the battle against the Islamic State group is something the central government will not be able to ignore indefinitely.

“The KRG has been attempting to entrench what is a de facto control over the city, even though it actually lies outside of the formal borders of the KRG as recognised under the Iraqi constitution,” Seçkin says.

“If they try to press on that point, and if they refuse to compromise, that will be a true flashpoint.”</s>Polls open in northern Iraq as Kurds cast ballots in referendum on whether to support independence from Baghdad

People in Iraq’s autonomous region of Kurdistan are voting in an independence referendum, amid rising tensions and international opposition.

Polls opened at 05:00 GMT with balloting also taking place in the disputed areas between the northern city of Erbil and the capital Baghdad, as well as the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, which is ethnically mixed.

The central government in Baghdad, which strongly opposes the referendum, sought control of the region’s international border posts and airports on Sunday, in anticipation of Monday’s vote.

Iraq’s government has also called on foreign countries to stop importing oil from the Kurdish region and to deal with them instead.

In a televised address on Sunday, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi warned of the dire consequences of the vote and vowed to never accept the disintegration of Iraq.

“This is an unconstitutional decision against the social fabric of our citizens. We will not recognise the referendum, nor its results,” Abadi said.

“We will take follow-up steps to protect the unity of the country and the interests of every citizen living in a unified Iraq.”

Meanwhile, the President of Iraq’s Kurdish regional government, Masoud Barzani, has defended the decision to hold the referendum.

“Is it a crime to ask people in Kurdistan to express in a democratic way what they want to have for the future?” he asked in a speech on Sunday.

The Kurdish leader also said he would seek talks with Iraq’s central government on how to implement the outcome of the vote.

“If we have a constructive dialogue, then we can give it even more time, in order to secure better relations between the Kurds and Baghdad,” he said.

About 2,065 polling stations are open for 10 hours. A total of 5.6 million people are eligible to vote in Kurdistan and other Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq, according to the election commission.

Voters will be asked: “Do you want the Kurdistan region and Kurdish areas outside the region to become an independent state?”

Official results are expected by Tuesday.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from the Kurdish capital of Erbil, said despite the “tug of war” between the politicians, there is “an upbeat atmosphere”.

“The Kurds say that this is their time to express their opinion and to take their future into their own hands,” she said.

The Kurds are likely to approve the referendum, but the non-binding vote is not expected to result in any formal declaration of independence.

The referendum has raised alarm in Iraq’s neighbours – Turkey, Iran and Syria – over concerns it could encourage their own Kurdish minorities to break away.

Turkey is home to the largest Kurdish population at an estimated 14 million.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Ankara would close the Habur border crossing with northern Iraq over the plebiscite and also threatened the Iraqi Kurds with blocking their key oil exports.

“After this, let’s see through which channels the northern Iraqi regional government will send its oil, or where it will sell it,” Erdogan said in a speech at a forum in Istanbul.

“We have the tap. The moment we close the tap, then it’s done.”

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day flow through the pipeline in Turkey from the northern Iraq region.

Meanwhile, Iran closed its border with northern Iraq’s Kurdish region on Monday, the Foreign Ministry said.

“At the request of Iraq, we have closed the airspace and ground borders with the Kurdish Regional Government,” ministry spokesman Behram Qasimi said at a news conference in Tehran.

A day earlier, Iran halted flights to airports in Iraqi Kurdistan at the request of the central government in Baghdad, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Feisal al-Istrabadi, former Iraqi ambassador to the UN, said the Kurdish government risks throwing the region into turmoil for no clear gain.

“For the Turks and the Iranians, but particulary for Turkey, this [referendum] is an existential threat,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking from Bloomington, Indiana. “How Turkey will deal with an independently Iraqi Kurdistan, but deny their own Kurds independence is a problem requiring Solomonic wisdom.”

The United States and the United Nations have also condemned the referendum.

The UN has warned of the vote’s “potentially destabilising effect,” while the US has said it could fuel regional unrest and distract attention from ongoing campaigns to rout the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Iraq and Syria.</s>Planes pictured on the tarmac at Arbil International Airport, in the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on November 23, 2015 (AFP Photo/Safin HAMED)

Tehran (AFP) - Iran said Sunday it had blocked all flights to and from Iraq's Kurdistan at the request of Baghdad, a day before the autonomous region holds an independence referendum opposed by Tehran.

"At the request of the central government of Iraq, all flights from Iran to Sulaymaniyah and Arbil, as well as all flights through our airspace originating from the Kurdistan region, have been stopped," said Supreme National Security Council spokesman Keivan Khosravi, according to official news agency IRNA.

The move was due to "the insistence" of Kurdistan officials in holding the referendum, Khosravi said.

He did not specify how long the ban would stay in place.

The vote was set to go ahead Monday despite opposition from Baghdad and its neighbours, including Tehran.

Iran warned last week that independence for the region would mean an end to all of border and security arrangements.

There are several regular flights from Iranian cities to the Kurdistan region.

The news comes hours after Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards began military exercises along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

Such exercises are common in the region, due to the persistent threat posed by Kurdish separatists, who regularly carry out cross-border attacks against Iranian security forces.</s>ISTANBUL – On September 25, Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will hold a referendum on independence that nearly every international actor opposes.

Experts say the referendum is mostly about using leverage against Baghdad, which strongly opposes it.

“[KRG president Masoud] Barzani is using this referendum to put pressure on Baghdad to give more concessions to the Kurds,” Gönül Tol, founding director of The Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, told The Media Line.

“The referendum doesn’t mean independence and they all know that. Even Kurdish officials have acknowledged that reality.”

KRG lawmakers have stated that a “yes” vote, predicted by most analysts, would not result in an official declaration of independence. Denise Natali, director and distinguished research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, says Barzani and his ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) are also using the referendum to maintain relevance as the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS, or Daesh), during which the KRG’s armed forces played a key role and expanded its territory, winds down.

“[Barzani and the KDP] may think this is an opportune moment, after all of the Daesh territorial gains, to consolidate power [and] authority in some way,” she told The Media Line.

Tol agrees, pointing out that there have been protests against Barzani’s rule and opposition politicians have called for him to step down.

“There are a lot of divisions among the Kurds themselves,” she said. “[Barzani] wants the referendum to have a rally around the flag effect.”

“I think [the referendum] is a sign of deep desperation by Masoud Barzani because he’s actually weak. He’s only strong because everybody else is weaker,” she said. Barzani has overstayed his presidential term since it ended in 2015, at which time parliament was suspended, and has been accused of corruption and oppressing opponents. “Barzani has put his opponents on the defensive, daring them to oppose a Kurdish independence referendum. It’s a pretty shrewd political maneuver,” Steven A. Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Media Line.

“It allows Barzani – no democrat – to discipline the political arena in his favor.”

On Tuesday, Iraq’s parliament voted to reject the referendum, but Kurdish officials don’t accept the decision.

“The worst thing about the whole thing is it’s circumvented the most important people,” Natali said. “You can’t do this without at least the recognition from the Iraqi government through the constitution under parliament, or else it’s illegitimate. It was done without any international support, without any regional support.”

Natali believes a yes vote in the referendum won’t change the KRG’s precarious position – lacking any external support, with a troubled economy, no access to the sea, and holding territory disputed with Baghdad. The disputed territories are in the governorates of Kirkuk, Nineveh and Diyala.

“This doesn’t change anything. If you do this unilaterally, you’re going to be in the same position you’re in now – de facto controlling territories that nobody else recognizes that you’re in charge of,” Natali said. “You can’t just say that ‘Kirkuk is mine.’ You can’t just say ‘Nineveh is mine.’” Tol also expresses hesitancy over the KRG’s ability to be fully independent, especially after not being able to defend itself alone against the ISIS onslaught in 2014.

“Many people said ‘How are you going to have an independent state if you can’t even protect your own territory, if you depend on Baghdad and the international community?’” she said.

No regional or international actor except Israel has supported the referendum. The United States, the United Nations, Turkey and Iran have all denounced it.

The KRG’s once-booming economy took a major hit in 2014 when Baghdad cut off huge budget payments amounting to 17 per cent of Iraq’s oil sales. Since then, Erbil has been selling its oil through a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, making it highly dependent on Ankara.

A Turkish foreign ministry statement on September 14 said that “continued insistence on carrying out this referendum, despite all friendly advice to the contrary, will carry a cost.” Ankara has been fighting a decades-long war against Kurdish militants at home but enjoys warm relations with Barzani.

Tol believes Turkey is unlikely to take concrete action against the KRG.

“I don’t think that Turkey really sees [Iraqi Kurdistan’s] independence as an existential threat, but the timing is difficult because elections are coming up in Turkey in 2019 and [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan has been playing on the nationalists,” she said.

Devlet Bahçeli, Erdoğan’s political ally and leader of Turkey’s ultranationalist National Movement Party (MHP), said on September 9 that the Kurdistan referendum is a “cause for war.”

“Will [Ankara’s] actions match [its] rhetoric? Hard guess, but I am led to believe no, it will not,” Aydın Selçen, Turkey’s former consul general to Erbil, told The Media Line. “Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil will flow through Ceyhan to world markets, Habur [border crossing] will remain open and [there will be] no overland military intervention in Shengal or Qandil [regions in northern Iraq].”

Iran, a powerful player in Iraq with close ties to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and Iraqi Shiite militias, and often troubled relations with its own Kurdish population, also opposes the referendum.

“The Iranians can cut off trade; Sulamaniyah [a city in Iraqi Kurdistan’s east] runs on trade with Iran. Those Iranian backed militias can also cause a lot of mischief,” Cook said.

The United States also vocally opposes the referendum, but Cook thinks Washington wouldn’t simply abandon its ally.

“The US has a long history of double dealing with the Kurds, but even with the Trump Administration’s opposition, it seems hard to believe that Washington will leave the Kurds alone to face its neighbors should they really try to secede,” he said.

Tol says that whatever happens after the referendum, the KRG has many challenges in front of it as it continues to pursue independence.

“There are just so many problems facing an independent state,” she said. “It’s a bumpy road ahead.”</s>KALAK, Iraq — "For the sake of the sacrifices and blood of the martyrs, let's all say yes for Kurdistan independence," reads a large billboard in the center of Kalak, a small town in Iraq's northern Kurdish region. Independence is not given, it's taken!" reads another banner hanging below a cluster of red, green, yellow and white Kurdish flags.

Iraq's Kurds are set to vote Monday in a referendum on support for independence that has stirred fears of instability across the region as the war against the Islamic State group winds down. The Kurds are likely to approve the referendum, but the non-binding vote is not expected to result in any formal declaration of independence.

The United States and the United Nations have condemned the referendum. Turkey, which is battling its own Kurdish insurgency, has threatened to use military force to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state, and Baghdad has warned it will respond militarily to any violence resulting from the vote.

Initial results from the poll are expected Tuesday, with the official results announced later in the week.

Denied independence when colonial powers drew the map of the Middle East after World War I, the Kurds form a sizable minority in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. They have long been at odds with the Baghdad government over the sharing of oil revenues and the fate of disputed territories like the city of Kirkuk, which are expected to take part in the vote.

"There are pressures on us to postpone, to engage in dialogue with Baghdad, but we will not go back to a failed experiment," Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish regional president, said to roars of applause at a rally of tens of thousands in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, on Friday evening.

But beneath the sea of flag-waving, the Kurdish region continues to be plagued by endemic corruption and economic decline.

Among the portraits on Kalak's main street is that of Amen Jadr Mahmoud's 18-year-old son, Gaylan, one of the more than 1,500 Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga, killed in the fight against the Islamic State group. "His death was noble, he died fighting for Kurdistan," Mahmoud said.

But even Mahmoud, a die-hard nationalist who lost four other relatives to fighting with Iraqi government forces decades earlier, has misgivings about the Kurdish region's political leadership.

"If we have a state then we will build institutions that will let us change the faces of the main parties," he said.

"Once we have a state we can get rid of them or at least prevent them from stealing so much."

The Kurds have been a close American ally for decades, and the first U.S. airstrikes in the campaign against IS were launched to protect Irbil. Kurdish forces later regrouped and played a major role in driving the extremists from much of northern Iraq, including Mosul, the country's second largest city.

"The Kurdish contribution to the ISIS fight, it can't be overstated," said U.S. Army Col. Charles Costanza, a commander at a coalition base just outside Irbil, using another acronym for the extremist group. "We couldn't have done Mosul without the Kurds."

But the U.S. has long been opposed to Kurdish moves toward independence, fearing it could lead to the breakup of Iraq and bring even more instability to an already volatile Middle East.

Mahmoud and other Kurds who support independence view the international opposition as a betrayal.

"My son was fighting Daesh on behalf of the entire world," said Mahmoud, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"And now the international community is ignoring us."

 The Kurds' sense of sacrifice and betrayal is rooted in decades of war and oppression, in which they repeatedly rose up against the Baghdad government and were often brutally repressed.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Kurds sided with Iran against Saddam Hussein, who punished them with a scorched-earth campaign involving chemical weapons that killed an estimated 50,000 people. A no-fly zone imposed by the U.S. in the early 1990s largely halted the killings, and allowed the Kurds to develop de facto autonomy, which was formalized after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In the years after the American invasion, the Kurdish region emerged as a rare success story. The peshmerga insulated the region from the insurgency and sectarian killings that plagued much of the rest Iraq, and oil revenues fueled an economic boom, leading to talk of a new Dubai.

That all changed in 2014, when IS rampaged across northern Iraq, at one point approaching within a few miles of Irbil. The collapse in global oil prices later that year led to a severe economic downturn, exposing a government riddled with corruption and an economy dominated by a bloated public sector. Barzani, whose term expired in 2015, has prevented parliament from meeting for two years, and many opponents of the referendum see it as a cynical attempt to hold onto power.

Meanwhile, as the peshmerga halted the IS advance and then began to push back with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes, they seized territory equivalent to 50 percent of their autonomous region, further raising tensions with Baghdad. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk, with large Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen and Christian communities, is divided over the referendum and has seen low-level clashes in the days leading up to Monday's vote.

Hoshyar Zebari, a longtime Kurdish political figure and former Iraqi foreign minister, acknowledges that the referendum is partly an attempt by Kurdish leaders to cement their legacy, but says it is also rooted in Baghdad's failings and in Iran's growing influence over the central government.

"The new Iraq is broken," he said. "If we miss this opportunity for independence, it will never happen again in our lifetimes."

 ___

 Associated Press writer Salar Salim contributed to this report.</s>OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is refusing to weigh in on a Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq, saying he appreciated that other countries held their tongues during Quebec's referendums.

Iraqi Kurds are expected to vote overwhelmingly in favour of seeking their own country during a controversial referendum today.

Many oppose the vote, including the U.S., the European Union and Turkey, as well as Iraq's central government in Baghdad, which claims some of the same oil-rich territory as the Kurds.

Canadian officials have said they support a united Iraq, but otherwise refuse to comment on whether the referendum should be held or how Canada will react to an independence vote.</s>ARBIL: Iraqi Kurds voted in an independence referendum on Monday as tensions rose with Baghdad and neighbouring countries over the historic vote.

The referendum was proceeding peacefully but there were fears of potential unrest, especially after lawmakers in Baghdad demanded that troops be sent to disputed areas where the referendum was taking place.

As night fell, a curfew was imposed in parts of the disputed city of Kirkuk, police said. Iran and Turkey, which both worry it will stoke separatist aspirations among their own sizeable Kurdish minorities, were also increasing pressure on Iraq’s Kurds, with Ankara saying it would shut its border and threatening to block key oil exports.

An overwhelming "Yes" outcome is expected, but the vote is non-binding and Kurdish officials have said there are no plans for an immediate declaration of independence. Voters were nonetheless flocking to the polls to pursue a long-cherished dream of statehood, and keen to show off their ink-stained fingers after casting their vote.

Kurdish flags were festooned in all streets, on cars and outside homes across Iraqi Kurdistan. Voters headed to the polls early, many men dressed in traditional Kurdish dress of brown shirt and billowing trousers for the occasion.

"I came very early to be the first to vote for a Kurdish state," Diyar Abubakr, 33, said outside a polling station in regional capital Arbil.

"It’s a day of celebration today. That’s why I’ve put on our traditional outfit, which I bought for the occasion," he said.

One voter even brought a cow to slaughter before the start of the referendum. "I brought this cow as today the state is born and it’s tradition to slaughter a cow for a birth," said Dalgash Abdallah, 27.

Initial results are expected to be announced 24 hours after polls close. Veteran Iraqi Kurd leader Massud Barzani, who initiated the vote, cast his ballot early in the morning, smiling and wearing a traditional outfit.

Polling stations are scattered across the three northern provinces of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan -- Arbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk -- as well as in disputed border zones such as the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. In Sulaimaniyah, second city of the autonomous region, 40-year-old Diyar Omar came to cast his vote also wearing traditional clothes.</s>Erbil (AsiaNews / Agencies) – Polls opened this morning in the controversial Kurdistan independence referendum, which has no binding value and is intended to be overwhelmingly vote in favor. The Iraqi government and the Supreme Court have repeatedly intervened against the electoral consultation, calling it unconstitutional and threatening to peace in the region, and promises "measures" to defend the unity of the country. Among them is the blockade of proceeds from oil, an essential resource for the local economy.

The vote for Kurdish independence - which also frightens Christians, yazides and Turkmen - has raised tensions with the local executive and many of the governments of the region with the singular exception of Israel. At the request of Baghdad, Iran has blocked all flights to and from Iraqi Kurdistan. Ankara endorsed prolongation of the presence of its troops in Syrian and Iraqi territory for another year to protect the country from external "threats".

Western Chancellors also fear that it may cause new conflicts and weaken Arab-Kurdish forces in the common struggle against the Islamic State (IS, formerly Isis).

The vote - strongly demanded by Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani – will be held in 12,072 polling stations, with over 5,3 million people eligible to vote having registered in the past few weeks. The operations started this morning at 8 am local time and concern three provinces of the Kurdish autonomous region: Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk, as well as in the controversial oil rich Kirkuk region.

Local sources report that the first results should arrive within 24 hours of the beginning of the vote. However, it is already possible to imagine the overwhelming victory of "yes"; all the main streets and squares of the region, as well as houses and public buildings, are decorated with flags and coats of arms of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, he central Iraqi government has already made its opposition felt. Prime Minister al-Abadi reports that all "necessary measures" will be taken to defend national unity. The referendum, continues the Iraqi leader, affects both the country and the region with destabilizing effects, and is "anti-constitutional and against civil peace".

Baghdad has also invited all foreign governments to "deal with him alone [central executive] for oil and border issues." Iraqi Kurdistan exports an average of about 600,000 barrels of oil per day through a pipeline running through Turkey to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.

The Christians of Alqosh, a small town on the plain of Nineveh among the few to escape the control of the Islamic state in the summer of 2014 are also highly critical of the vote. Over the past few weeks, the Kurdish government has removed the local mayor from office, replacing him with an exponent of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (Pdk), in power in the region. A move that has raised the protests of the local community that, in recent days, has targeted posters and letters calling for "yes". The fear is that, once the danger of Isis has passed, the new "Kurdish" threat may preclude the future of Christians on the plain.

Behind the reasons of the referendum illustrated by Barzani, what he calls the failure of "partnership with Baghdad" since the fall of former dictator Saddam Hussein following the 2003 American invasion. Hence the decision to summon his people and impose his designs through the vote for the regions detachment from the central government. "The referendum - concluded Barzani - does not want to define boundaries or impose an accomplished fact. We want a dialogue with Baghdad to resolve our problems, negotiations [for controversial issues, such as Kirkuk] can last even one or two years. "</s>OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is refusing to weigh in on a Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq, saying he appreciated that other countries held their tongues during Quebec's referendums.

Iraqi Kurds are expected to vote overwhelmingly in favour of seeking their own country during a controversial referendum today.

Many oppose the vote, including the U.S., the European Union and Turkey, as well as Iraq's central government in Baghdad, which claims some of the same oil-rich territory as the Kurds.

Canadian officials have said they support a united Iraq, but otherwise refuse to comment on whether the referendum should be held or how Canada will react to an independence vote.
Voters in Iraqi Kurdistan head to the polls for a referendum on independence from Iraq.