"To our people in the Kurdistan region: we defend our Kurdish citizens as we defend all Iraqis and will not allow any attack on them," Abadi tweeted in English on Saturday.
An Iraqi prime minister adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Abadi was referring to either an internal or external attack.
"We will not allow any harm to you and we will share our loaf of bread together," Abadi wrote in another tweet.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) held a non-binding referendum on secession from Iraq in defiance of Baghdad’s stiff opposition on September 25. Kurdish officials said over 90 percent of voters said ’Yes’ to separation from Iraq.
The voting stations were dotted across the three provinces of Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk that form the Iraqi Kurdistan Region as well as in the disputed bordering zones such as the oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
While much of the international community, including the UN, the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
and Iraq’s neighbors, has opposed the referendum, Israel has been the only entity to openly support an independent Kurdish state, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backing "the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state" of their own.
Political observers have warned that KRG President
Massoud Barzani... hereditary head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, maybe a little too close to the Medes and the Persians for most people's tastes...
’s referendum scenario is in line with Israel’s policy of dividing the regional Moslem states.
In another tweet on Saturday, Abadi said Baghdad wants to have control over the country’s oil revenues "in order to pay Kurdistan Region employee salaries in full and so that money will not go to the corrupt."