The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region asked its Parliament yesterday to plan a referendum on Kurdish independence, signalling his impatience with Baghdad, which is fighting to repel Sunni insurgents and struggling to form a new government.

The United States has urged the Kurds to stand with Baghdad as Iraq faces an onslaught by Sunni Muslim militants led by an al-Qaeda offshoot who have seized large parts of the north and west and are threatening to march on the capital.

Iraq’s five million Kurds, who have governed themselves in relative peace since the 1990s, have expanded their territory by as much as 40 per cent in recent weeks as the sectarian insurgency has threatened to split the country.

Kurdish President Massoud Barzani asked lawmakers to form a committee to organise a referendum on independence and pick a date for the vote. “The time has come for us to determine our own fate and we must not wait for others to determine it for us,” Barzani said in a closed session of the Kurdish Parliament that was later broadcast on television.

We will not deal with those who have sabotaged the country

“For that reason, I consider it necessary ... to create an independent electoral commission as a first step and, second, to make preparations for a referendum.”

Barzani’s call came days after Kurds and Sunnis walked out of the newly-elected Iraqi Parliament’s first session in Baghdad, complaining that the majority Shi’ites had failed to nominate a prime minister.

Many Kurds have long wanted to declare independence and now sense a golden opportunity, with Baghdad weak and Sunni armed groups in control of northern cities such as Mosul and Tikrit.

Barzani, often at odds with the central government, indicated that his people would not wait on Baghdad forever.

“We will not deal with those who have sabotaged the country,” he said. “Iraq has divided itself and we are not responsible for that”

Many see the Shi’ite Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as the main obstacle to resolving the crisis and hope he will step aside. Maliki himself said a political solution went hand-in-hand with the campaign to recapture areas held by insurgents.