WASHINGTON — Facing an Iraq that is being ripped apart by sectarian violence and a divisive government, leaders of the country’s Kurdish region said today they now believe they have a better chance than ever to break away and create an independent nation.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s north has for years threatened to separate from the rest of the country, and it has feuded with both the Shiite-led government in Baghdad over oil revenues and the Sunni tribes who claim authority over territory the Kurds believe is theirs.

Now, with Baghdad battling a bloody Sunni insurgency, Kurdish officials say Iraq is already split along sectarian and ethnic lines.

“Iraq is divided. We have got a new reality,” Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, said today.

He was in Washington to update senior Obama administration officials on Kurdish aspirations for “self-determination” — the region’s term for breaking away from the central government in Baghdad.

Hussein said the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, had for years pushed divisive policies that made Iraq’s current unrest inevitable. But he said it became clear in early June, after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took over the northern Sunni hold of Mosul, that the country was breaking into three distinct parts.

“We are heading toward exercising self-determination,” Hussein said. “The process has already started.”

On Tuesday, in the Kurdish capital of Irbil, Barzani asked Kurdish lawmakers during a closed-door session to begin working on a referendum to allow Iraqi Kurds to vote for independence.