ANKARA, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Turkey, Iran and Iraq have agreed to take "joint precautionary measures" against the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government's (KRG) bid to hold a referendum of independence from Iraq, Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
Following a trilateral foreign ministers' meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York late Wednesday, Turkey, Iran and Iraq issued a joint declaration against the KRG independence referendum slated for Sept. 25.
The three ministers, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Javad Zarif, agreed to put pressure on KRG to cancel the referendum, warning of coordinated "counter-measures" to the vote.
The three countries "noted that the referendum violates the Iraqi constitution and expressed concern over the possible instability in the region," read the declaration.
They called for "dialogue within the Iraqi constitution" to resolve differences between Baghdad and Erbil, as well as international pressure to persuade the KRG to abandon the referendum.
