Arbil, Oct 12 (AFP) Iraq's prime minister today denied anattack on the Kurds was imminent, in a bid to defuse tensionsthat had prompted Kurdish peshmerga fighters to temporarilyseal off road links with the rest of the country.
"We are not going to use our army to fight our people orto make war on our Kurdish citizens or others," Prime MinisterHaider al-Abadi said.
"Our duty is to preserve the unity of our country, toimplement the constitution, and to protect citizens andnational forces," he told a meeting of tribal leaders in thewestern province of Anbar, where Iraqi security forces arebattling to seize the Islamic State (IS) group's last bastionin the country.
The rise in tensions came two weeks after Kurdish votersoverwhelmingly backed independence in a non-binding referendumthat the central government condemned as illegal.
Iraqi Kurdish forces closed the two main roads connectingArbil and Dohuk with the northern city of Mosul for severalhours, a Kurdish military official said.
"The closure was prompted by fears of a possible attackby Iraqi forces on the disputed areas," held by Kurdish forcesbut outside the autonomous Kurdish region in the north of thecountry, the official said.
Kurdish authorities said late yesterday they feared Iraqigovernment forces and allied paramilitary units were gearingup to launch an assault on the autonomous region.
"We're receiving dangerous messages that the Hashed al-Shaabi (paramilitary forces) and federal police are preparinga major attack from the southwest of Kirkuk and north of Mosulagainst Kurdistan," the Kurdistan Regional Government'sSecurity Council said.
Security sources said today that Iraq's elite CounterTerrorism Service and Rapid Response Force had deployed moreforces near peshmerga positions around Rashad, a village some65 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk city.
The oil-rich province of the same name, areas of whichtook part in the referendum, is disputed between the Kurds andBaghdad. (AFP)RB.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.