Eli Lake, Columnist

Tillerson Letters Show U.S. Nearly Averted Kurdish Referendum

The secretary of state offered internationally backed negotiations for independence, but too late.

October 13, 2017 at 3:25 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

The referendum that almost wasn't.
Photographer: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

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The U.S. came very close to getting the Kurds to call off a statehood referendum that has thrown the region into turmoil since late last month. But in the end the final proposal, made just two days before the independence vote was scheduled for the Kurdistan region of Iraq, came too late to stop the vote.

The president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Massoud Barzani, rejected this last-minute offer from the U.S., United Kingdom and Iraq to call off the Sept. 25 referendum. Those nations were offering an internationally supported negotiation between the Kurds and Baghdad for greater autonomy and possible independence.