Iraqi PM meets Kurdish leaders
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2009/08/2009828427361376.html The US is pushing for the territorial disagreements to be resolved before it troops are withdrawn [AFP]
Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, is set for talks with Kurdish officials in Iraq's semi-autonomous northern region aimed at resolving disputes over land and oil.
The Iraqi leader arrived in Sulaimaniyah, the second largest city in Iraq's Kurdish north, on Sunday, where he was met by a delegation that included Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president.
The trip is al-Maliki's first to the region since becoming the prime minister of Iraq's first permanent post-invasion government in 2006.
It comes amid US pressure for the central government and Kurdish authorities to settle their differences before US troops leave Iraq in 2011.
Al-Maliki is to hold talks with Talabani and Massoud Barzani, the recently re-elected Kurdish regional president, at Dokan, a summer resort 75km northwest of Sulaimaniyah.
"This visit is a very positive point and opens dialogue between the two [parties] in order to solve the problems between the central government and Kurdistan," Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish MP, said.
Differences
The Kurds are pushing to expand their semi-autonomous region to include the oil-rich, ethnically-mixed province of Kirkuk and other areas.
But the move has triggered an increasingly heated war of words with the central government.
During campaigning ahead of last weekends' regional elections, Barzani insisted that he would not "compromise" on the Kurds' longstanding claims to Kirkuk.
On a visit to Iraq last week, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, urged Arab and Kurdish leaders to settle their political differences before US troops leave Iraq under a security agreement between Baghdad and Washington.
The US military is closely monitoring the situation and has set up liaison offices with commanders of Kurdish fighters and Baghdad government forces in a bid to ease tensions, General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, said.