Kurdish ministers who suspended their participation in the government of outgoing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have rejoined the administration.

Kurdish ministers who suspended their participation in the government of outgoing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have rejoined the administration, Iraq's outgoing foreign minister said on Wednesday.

"I am back in Baghdad as foreign minister," Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd, told Reuters.

Zebari urged the world to back his country against militants of the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) after the al-Qaeda offshoot released a video purportedly showing the beheading of a U.S. journalist kidnapped in Syria.

Zebari told Reuters that ISIL was a threat to the world, not just to Iraq's minority ethnic groups whose members it has killed in its latest sweep through the north.