The head of KRG, Nechirvan Barzani and his accompanying delegation visited Baghdad on Monday to  solve the problem of oil exports from the region through pipelines to Turkey and speed up the approval of the general budget .

Shahristani said in an interview with the semi-official al-Iraqiya TV , followed by " Shafaq News " that after hours of meetings, the two sides agreed on the representation of our Kurds brothers in SOMO institution and that this is the only national exist responsible for the export of oil , adding that, " This is an important step forward . "

Baghdad had threatened to sue Ankara and cut the region's share of the federal budget if exports flowed through the pipeline without its consent.

The establishment of the pipeline was completed late last year and began pumping oil since then to storage tanks at the Turkish port of Ceyhan , but exports did not depart from the port to provide an opportunity for diplomatic efforts .

Negotiations continued for several months but have made little progress . Shahristani said that, there are still differences over the oil sharing of export revenues .

"The second issue which is not solved yet is that they want to deposit oil export revenues in a special account for the region in the Development Fund for Iraq,” he added.

Proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil in the Development Fund for Iraq are being deposit in New York for the disbursement of Baghdad . Kurdistan has the right to receive a share of 17 percent but says it actually gets less frequently in recent weeks, Baghdad accused them of withholding funds which led to non-payment of salaries of government employees in Kurdistan .

Shahristani said the Ministry of Finance sent sufficient funds now to pay the salaries of Kurdish government employees for January but faced a liquidity crisis and cannot pay in February or after it , unless the region resumed oil exports .