Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said his Kurdistan Democratic party had no plans to dissolve its armed militia, the peshmerga, which he said was purely a defensive force, it was confirmed on Monday. Mr Barzani’s announcement, reported in a local newspaper at the weekend, is a blow to the US-led coalition’s plans to unite Iraqi Kurdistan with the rest of Iraq as part of the postwar political process, and comes as negotiations over a new constitution for Iraq are gaining momentum. The coalition would like to see Kurdish militias eventually dissolved into a new Iraqi national army as part of a nation-building process. Mr Barzani’s announcement signals that agreeing on a new constitutional framework for a united Iraq will be far from easy. Full Story
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