ERBIL, Iraq — Two rival
Iranian Kurdish opposition parties based in northern Iraq have announced
in a joint statement their reunification 16 years after they split over
internal disputes.
اضافة اعلان
Negotiations
between the
Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Kurdistan
Democratic Party-Iran — both banned in the Islamic republic — “led to the party’s
reunification”, said the statement issued late Sunday.
Formed in 1945, the
KDPI is the oldest Iranian Kurdish party, but most of its members are based in
northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
The party had led
an insurgency against the Iranian authorities since the Islamic Revolution in
1979, and it continues to oppose them from exile.
Assassinations have
targeted several leaders of the party, which Tehran considers a “terrorist”
organization.
In 2006, internal
disputes led to a faction of the KDPI splitting off and forming the Kurdistan
Democratic Party-Iran.
Their reunification
“is a new stage in the struggle against the regime of the Islamic Republic of
Iran and the mentality that denies Iran’s ethnic pluralism and the rights of
different peoples”, the statement said.
In July, Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards said they had arrested suspected “terrorists” in the
country’s northwest, saying they belonged to Kurdish separatist groups based in
northern Iran.
Tehran has
previously accused “counter-revolutionary” groups in northern Iraq of staging
attacks on its territory.
In September 2018,
Tehran struck the KDPI’s headquarters in northern Iraq, near the border with
Iran, killing 15 people.
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