title: Iraq to pay Kurdish Peshmerga, civil servants, says PM
text: BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government plans to soon start paying the salaries of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and civil servants working for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday. The semi-autonomous KRG has been struggling to pay the Peshmerga and its employees since 2014, after Baghdad stopped payments to it because of a dispute about oil-sharing revenue.   We will soon be able to pay all the salaries of the Peshmerga and the employees of the region,  Abadi told reporters  The cost of a three-year war on Islamic State added to the Kurdistan region s financial difficulties, and Iraqi troops captured the oil region of Kirkuk from the Peshmerga two weeks ago, halving the KRG s oil income.  Paying Kurdish salaries would help defuse tensions in the northern Iraqi region, where a referendum vote in favor of Kurdish independence in September triggered economic and military retaliation from the Iraqi government.  The Peshmerga had taken over the multi-ethnic region of Kirkuk in 2014, after the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of Islamic State, preventing the militants from controlling its oilfields. 