Interview: Iraqi Kurdistan’s coordinator for U.N. missions … Iraqi oil capital Basra faces tough new year … Kurds make deal with Sunni Arabs … Pentagon to make example of journalist: treat like terrorist …

There is one Iraq, but there are also two: the northern, potentially oil-rich region controlled by Iraq's Kurds, and the rest of Iraq. That, says the Kurdish liaison to U.N. efforts in Iraqi Kurdistan, is how the international community should view it.

"We say Iraq could not be treated as one simple state," said Dindar Zebari, the Kurdistan Regional Government's chief coordinator for U.N. activities. "The Republic of Iraq is not only the ministers in Baghdad. We have ministers in Irbil" -- the regional capital -- "which are sovereign, independent in terms of their policies and in terms of their areas of support."