Kurdish president urges preparations for independence vote - lawmakers

ARBIL Iraq (Reuters) - The president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish north asked the region's parliament on Thursday to prepare the way for a referendum on independence, according to lawmakers who attended the closed session.

Iraq's five million Kurds, who have ruled themselves within Iraq in relative peace since the 1990s, have expanded their territory by up to 40 percent in recent weeks as Sunni Islamist militants seized vast stretches of western and northern Iraq.