Iraq issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi, one of the top politicians from the Sunni minority, in December on the eve of the withdrawal of the last US troops.
That triggered a political crisis - with Hashemi’s Sunni-backed bloc announcing a boycott of parliament and the Shiite-led cabinet - and raised fears of a renewal of the sectarian violence that killed tens of thousands of people in 2006-07.
The crisis has abated somewhat in recent weeks, with most members of Hashemi’s Iraqiya bloc agreeing to lift the boycott.
But the vice president remains holed up in the northern Kurdish zone, refusing to return to Baghdad where he says he would not receive a fair trial.
Hashemi says the charges are political and has asked that the case be heard in Kirkuk, a town divided mainly between Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
The government says the case is purely criminal, the prosecution is independent and it cannot intervene. A Baghdad judiciary panel rejected moving the case to Kirkuk and set a trial for May in Baghdad.
“Upon request from the judiciary panel, and after setting a date for the trial, the Interior Ministry has demanded the Kurdistan regional government’s Interior Ministry carry out an arrest warrant against accused Tareq Al-Hashemi and hand him over to the judicial authorities,” Iraq’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.
It said the Iraqi Interior Ministry had received “confirmed information” that Hashemi intended to flee the country.
The leadership of Iraq’s Kurdish minority, which has frequently acted as a mediator in quarrels between Sunni and Shiite Arabs, has become embroiled in the dispute by playing host to Hashemi in the northern zone it controls.
Kurdish Deputy Interior Minister Jalal Kareem told Reuters the regional government had not received a request from the central government that it arrest Hashemi and hand him over.
“When we receive the request we will refer it to the region’s council of ministers, as we have a special status and separate legal and administrative entity,” he said in the Kurdish regional capital Arbil.
“We will carry out whatever the (Kurdish) council of ministers decides in response to the Interior Ministry’s request.”
