ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A number of ranking officials with the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) held a meeting in Sulaimani yesterday behind closed doors in which the head of its Politburo Executive Body called for reunification of his party with the Change Movement (Gorran) which splintered from the PUK in 2009.





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“The most important dimension of the meeting was a proposal by Mala Bakhtiar to work on appropriate mechanisms for a reunification of the PUK and the Gorran party,” Sirwan Kwekha Najim, head of PUK’s Soran Center, told Rudaw.The several hour-long meeting had been arranged upon a request from Bakhtiar and was held in secret on Saturday. A number of issues were discussed by the 35 high ranking PUK leadership and politburo members who attended the meeting.“I think our reunification with the Gorran party is not impossible. We can become one party again. The current situations in the Kurdistan Region require that we reunite in order to resolve the problems of Kurdistan,” Najim said.The PUK’s political infighting escalated in 2009, causing the party to splinter as a breakaway group formed Gorran.Internal political wrangling led to a further rift within the PUK this year. It again split into two factions in September 2016 with its deputy Kosrat Rasul leading one faction and the wife of party leader Jalal Talabani, Hero Ibrahim, leading the other.