Iraq’s Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani votes at a polling station during voting for Iraqi parliamentary election in Arbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, north of Baghdad April 30, 2014.

BAGHDAD — The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region asked its parliament on Thursday, July 3, to plan a referendum on Kurdish independence, signaling his impatience with Baghdad, which is fighting to repel insurgents and struggling to form a new government.

The move came despite U.S. pressure for Kurds to stand with Baghdad as Iraq faces an onslaught by Islamist militants, led by an al-Qaeda offshoot, which has seized large parts of the north and west and is threatening to march on the capital.

Iraq’s 5 million Kurds, who have governed themselves in relative peace since the 1990s, have expanded their territory by as much as 40 percent in recent weeks as the sectarian insurgency has threatened to split the country.

Kurdish President Massoud Barzani asked lawmakers to form a committee to organize a referendum on independence and pick a date for the vote.

“The time has come for us to determine our own fate and we must not wait for others to determine it for us,” Barzani said in a closed session of the Kurdish parliament that was later broadcast on television.

“For that reason, I consider it necessary … to create an independent electoral commission as a first step and, second, to make preparations for a referendum.”

Barzani’s call came days after Kurds and Sunnis walked out of the newly elected Iraqi parliament’s first session in Baghdad, complaining that the majority Shi’a had failed to nominate a prime minister.

Many Kurds have long wanted to declare independence and now sense a golden opportunity, with Baghdad weak and armed groups in control of northern cities such as Mosul and Tikrit.

Top U.S. defense officials, who have deployed advisers to the region to assess the state of the Iraqi military, said the security forces were able to defend Baghdad but would have difficulty going on the offensive to recapture lost territory, mainly because of logistical weaknesses.

“If you’re asking me will the Iraqis at some point be able to go back on the offensive to recapture the part of Iraq that they’ve lost, I think that’s a really broad campaign quality question,” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon. “Probably not by themselves.”

Dempsey said “the future is pretty bleak” for Iraqis unless they can bridge the sectarian differences within their government. The absence of an inclusive government, he said, was a factor in the security forces’ failure to stand up to ISIS.

Maliki himself said a political solution went hand-in-hand with the campaign to recapture areas held by insurgents.

“There is no security without complete political stability,” he said in a televised address on Wednesday. “We will proceed with our political projects but we will be on high alert and ready for the momentum of the battle.”

Security forces are battling fighters led by the Islamic State, which shortened its name from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham this week and named its leader “caliph,” the historical title of successors of the Prophet Mohammad who ruled the Muslim world.