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Kurdish Peshmerga forces will not fight alone against the Islamic State (IS), but are ready to help the federal government liberate Iraq's second-largest city, Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani said in an interview to Al Arabiya Tuesday, Sputnik reported.

"Liberation of Mosul is the duty of the federal government and the duty of the people of Mosul and of the surrounding tribes and the Sunnis in general. The Peshmerga will stand by their side and will help them strongly, but the Peshmerga alone cannot… enter in a battle to liberate Mosul because then the situation will turn into a Kurdish-Arab war, and this is something unacceptable for us," Barzani told Al Arabiya.

The president of Kurdistan also said that the successes in fight against the IS were largely due to the Peshmerga forces.

"I can say that 90 percent of the areas of the [Kurdish] region are safe now… I can say that the Peshmerga forces are the only ones who curbed ISIS [IS] progress," Barzani claimed, adding that if not for them, the oil-rich city Kirkuk would have fallen to extremists.