Baghdad:
Iraq's Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari says the Central Government has reached an agreement in a long-standing oil dispute with the semi-autonomous Kurdish regional government.
Zebari tells The Associated Press that the Kurdish government will send a total of 550,000 barrels of oil per day to the Iraqi Oil Ministry. In exchange, the Kurds will receive their 17-percent share of the national budget allocated to their region, plus installments of as much as $1 billion to boost the capabilities of Kurdish peshmerga fighters battling the Islamic State militant group.
Earlier this year, Baghdad cut the 17 percent of the state budget that is supposed to go to the Kurdish region after the Kurds began transporting oil from fields inside the autonomous zone to Turkey against Baghdad's wishes.