Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to recent reports of the escalation of violence in Kurdistan, what recent discussions has he had with his Iraqi counterpart on restoring peace to that region.

I regularly discuss the stability of the Kurdistan Region with Kurdistan Regional Government leaders and visited Erbil in December. We are deeply concerned by reports of violence in Sulaimaniyah, which our Consul General in Erbil has raised with the Kurdistan Regional Government. We call on security forces to respect the right to peaceful protest and to exercise restraint, and on those protesting to do so peacefully.