WASHINGTON - The United States would be willing to help facilitate conversations between Iraqi Kurds and Baghdad to try to ease tensions between the two sides after a Kurdish referendum vote, the US State Department said on Thursday.

"The United States, if asked, would be willing to help facilitate a conversation between the two," State Department spokesman Heather Nauert told a briefing, underscoring that Washington would not engage unless asked.

Nauert also said the United States was not in a position to confirm the authenticity of a newly released recording purported to be of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.