Iraq's top diplomat replaced

In a possible portent of growing factional conflict, a leading Kurdish minister was removed from Iraq's government, and the Kurdish semi-autonomous government took over two oilfields in the north, officials said Friday. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the face of Iraqi diplomacy for a more than a decade, was removed Friday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, two senior Iraqi government officials said. Zebari's ouster occurred as Kurds in Iraq's government launched a boycott followed comments made Thursday by al-Maliki, who purportedly linked ISIS extremists and Baathists to the Kurdish Regional Government in Irbil. The Kurds strongly dispute al-Maliki's allegations and say he wants to scapegoat the Kurds for his failures in northern Iraq and divert attention from how ISIS militants have poured into Iraq and waged warfare against the government, a senior Kurdish official said. The senior Kurdish official accused al-Maliki of trying to turn a conflict between al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government and Sunnis -- some of whom have supported the extremists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria -- into a dispute between Arabs and Kurds. Appointed as interim foreign minister was Hussain Shahristani, a Shiite and an al-Maliki adviser who is deputy prime minister for energy affairs, two senior Iraqi government officials said. The officials told CNN that Zebari was replaced after Kurdish ministers boycotted Cabinet meetings. CNN was not able to reach anyone at the Prime Minister's office for comment. Oil field seizures Meanwhile, the Kurds' Peshmerga forces on Friday seized two oilfields -- one medium-sized and the other small -- though the fields weren't under any threat from ISIS, a Kurdish government source said. The Kurds took the oilfields after accusing Iraq's Ministry of Oil of trying to "sabotage the recent mutually-agreed pipeline infrastructure linking the Avana dome with the Khurmala field" in northern Iraq, the Kurdish Regional Government said. ...CNN

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