WASHINGTON — According to a statement by the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Kurdish President Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the PKK have reached an agreement to unite Syria's Kurds for the upcoming Geneva II conference on Jan. 22 and will revive an earlier agreement by the Kurdish parties of Syria, after months of conflict. On Dec. 17, the Syrian Kurdish parties will have a bilateral meeting.

The agreement comes after the Kurdish parties realized disunity would harm their achievements in Syria and therefore started to negotiate. However, there is no official agreement yet between the Kurdish parties from Syria, and the KDP and PKK have different policies toward Syria and Turkey. The PKK and Turkey have been in conflict for years, while Barzani is trying to build relations with Turkey.

The Kurdish news network Rudaw reported that two senior Kurdish officials of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) from Turkey, Osman Baydemir, the mayor of Diyarbakir, and Kurdish parliament member Leyla Zana visited Erbil to resolve the differences between the Syrian Kurds, the KDP and PKK.

The Syrian Kurdish parties, the Kurdish National Council (KNC) backed by Barzani and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) backed by the PKK were supposed to work together after the July 2012 Erbil agreement supervised by Barzani, but tensions remained ever since. Nevertheless, several sources confirm that the KDP and PKK remained in contact, despite statements against each other in the KDP and PKK-affiliated media.