Iraq vice president: Baghdad won’t tolerate creation of ‘second Israel’ (Greater Kurdistan)

(Seems like even our puppets in the region oppose the creation of Greater Kurdistan)

from Press TV (confirmed here and here)

Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki has denounced a planned Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq, warning that Baghdad would not tolerate the establishment of “a second Israel,” after the occupying regime became the only entity to support the so-called plebiscite.

Maliki, who was also Iraq’s prime minister from 2006 to 2014, made the remarks in a meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq, Douglas Silliman, in the capital Baghdad on Sunday, adding that the leaders of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan must “call off the referendum.”

“The so-called independence plebiscite “is contrary to the constitution and does not serve the general interests of the Iraqi people, not even the particular interests of the Kurds,” Maliki said.

His comments came two days after lawmakers of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in its capital Erbil, approved the September 25 referendum as opposition legislators boycotted the parliament’s first session in two years.

Sixty-five out of the 68 Kurdish lawmakers present in the 111-seat regional parliament held the secession vote in the face of fierce opposition from the central government in Baghdad, the United Nations and the United States…

[read more here]