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Iraqi PM visits Kurdistan for land, oil talks

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-08-04 08:35

BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki paid a visit on Sunday to the northern Kurdish region to hold talks with Kurdish leaders over disputes of oil and land.

Kurdish President Masoud Barazani (L) welcomes Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (R) after his arrival at Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region near Sulaimaniya, 260 km (160 miles) northeast of Baghdad, August 2, 2009. [Xinhua]

Maliki arrived in the city of Sulaimaniyah, some 330 km north of Baghdad, and was received by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and senior Kurdish leaders.

Later in the day, Maliki held talks with the Kurdish leaders at Dukan resort, some 75 km northeast of Sulaimaniyah, during which the two sides voiced commitment to solving their problems in reference to the constitution and forming committees to continue discussions over the disputed issues between Baghdad and the Kurdish region.

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"Our meeting was positive and we have agreed to support the national unity and the federal system," Maliki told reporters after meeting with Talabani and Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

"We also agreed on the necessity of finding a mechanism to continue discussions to solve the pending problems between the region and Baghdad," Maliki said.

For his part, Barzani said his regional government will send a delegation to Baghdad soon to continue the discussions.

Maliki's talks with Kurdish leaders came amid US pressure on the central government and the Kurdish authorities to compromise the deep differences between Arabs and Kurds before the US troops complete withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

Maliki's visit is his first to the autonomous region since he took office in 2006 as prime minister of Iraq's first permanent government after the US-led invasion in 2003.

The talks between Baghdad and the Kurdish region came on the heels of Kurdish parliamentary and presidential elections that resulted in re-election of Barzani as the president of the KRG and two main Kurdish parties retaining control of the Kurdish parliament.

The Kurds' demands to expand their autonomous region in northern Iraq to include the oil-rich and ethnically-mixed province of Kirkuk and other areas in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh and Diyala have increased tensions between Maliki's Shiite-dominated government and the Kurds.

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