The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senior Kurdish officials served notice on Thursday that Kurdistan would not participate in a new Iraqi government unless Baghdad grants it expanded autonomy and does not insist on reversing their occupation of Kirkuk.

“We are going to give once again a chance to the political process in Baghdad, but we are not going to think that is the only path,” said Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish autonomous region.

“Parallel to that we are going to build ourselves, and we are heading toward exercising self-determination,” Mr. Hussein added before he went to the White House to see Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Antony Blinken, the deputy national security adviser.

Mr. Hussein’s comments came as Mr. Barzani asked the Kurdish Parliament, in a closed-door speech, to organize a referendum on independence, a move that caused dismay among Sunni and Shiite politicians in Baghdad.

Secretary of State John Kerry has urged the Kurds to play a leading role in forming a unified government in Baghdad and to defer their dreams of independence. Or as Mr. Kerry put it in a meeting with the Kurdish president in Erbil last week, “this moment requires statesmanship.”

That was a message that Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, emphasized this week: “We’ve been very consistent and clear about our view that a stronger Iraq is a united Iraq, a united Iraq is a stronger Iraq.”

But there was no indication in comments by Mr. Hussein or Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of Kurdistan’s foreign affairs department, that the Kurds were merely seeking leverage for the negotiations in Baghdad or shelving their desire for statehood.

While the Kurdish officials referred to self-determination as a step the Kurds might take if the process of government formation in Baghdad fails, they also expressed doubts that the negotiations with their Sunni and Shiite counterparts would succeed.

“Are they going to recognize the new reality in Iraq?” said Mr. Hussein, referring to Sunni and Shiite politicians who are struggling to form a government after Sunni militants captured much of western and northern Iraq and Kurdish pesh merga fighters moved to occupy and defend territories long disputed between Arabs and Kurds. That recognition, he added, would entail “recognizing the border of Kurdistan” and “recognizing the independence of our economy.”

“These are questions which we will raise and we need answers,” Mr. Hussein said. “If they cannot give answers,” the Kurds would make their own decisions on “the future of Kurdistan.”

Indeed, one purpose of holding talks in Baghdad, Mr. Hussein said, may ultimately be to negotiate the terms of the “divorce” between Kurdistan and Iraq.

“We have never been treated equally; nor have we been treated as a partner,” Mr. Bakir said.

After the White House meeting, Mr. Biden’s office issued a statement asserting that both sides had “agreed on the importance of forming a new government in Iraq that will pull together all communities” and can counter the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Mr. Barzani’s speech to the Kurdish Parliament was closed to the public, and reporters received accounts from Kurdish lawmakers who attended it.

Mr. Barzani has stated unequivocally that he does not plan to give up Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq that sits on substantial oil reserves. While nothing in his speech on Thursday appeared to go beyond his previous comments on Kirkuk, the insistent drumbeat that the Kurds would not cede Kirkuk and other disputed areas and planned to move toward independence made clear that a de facto partition of the country could really happen.

In Baghdad, Haider al-Abadi, an influential member of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Shiite State of Law party, said that Mr. Barzani appeared to be seeking leverage for the negotiations in Baghdad.

“Barzani is looking to get all the elements of a state without declaring a state,” Mr. Abadi said. “He is taking everything without giving anything.”

Even Sunni lawmakers, who have expressed sympathy for the Kurds’ frustration with Mr. Maliki’s government, said they were deeply worried because it is principally Sunnis who live near the Kurdish border who would be affected if Kurdistan became an independent entity, especially if that entity included disputed areas. Sunnis, who were forcibly moved to the region more than 40 years ago as an effort by the Saddam Hussein regime to mix Iraq’s sects, fear becoming marginalized as well as losing a claim to the area’s oil wealth.

“We hope that the Kurds’ leader will not take a step which could have an impact on their partners without taking them into account,” said Dafar al-Ani, a leader of a new coalition of Sunnis in the Iraqi Parliament.

“We have a rooted belief in the Kurds’ rights,” he said, adding, “We do not deny the oppression that the Kurds faced for decades, and we are aware that they still have problems with the central authorities, but we hope that our brother Massoud will not take any fateful decisions which could impact his partners without discussions.”

Kurdish lawmakers by contrast sounded a note of certainty after the speech, although they asserted that any decision would be made by the Parliament as well as the Kurdish leadership.

“Barzani will not make a decision alone,” said Haj Karwan, a Kurdish Parliament member. “The Kurdish Parliament will have the final word on the future of Kurdistan, but our armed forces will not retreat, and we will stay in Kirkuk to protect everyone,” he said, repeating, almost exactly, Mr. Barzani’s words.