DUKAN, Iraq: Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki made his first trip to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region in more than two years on Sunday in a bid to resolve key disputes with regional leaders over land and oil.
He is holding talks with regional president Massud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, amid US pressure for the central government and Kurdish authorities to settle their differences before American troops pull out in 2011.
The meeting comes hot on the heels of Kurdish parliamentary and presidential elections that returned Barzani to power, and less than six months before general elections across the country in January.
Arriving at Sulaimaniyah airport on Sunday morning, Maliki kissed Barzani on the cheek, the traditional greeting in the Arab world.
His talks with Talabani and Barzani were being held at Dukan, a summer resort 75 km northwest of Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan’s second largest city. Television footage showed Talabani sitting at a desk in a large conference room, with Maliki, whose last trip to the region was in June 2007, to his right and Barzani to his left, the Iraqi and Kurdish flags behind them.
“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,” senior Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman said.
Kurdish demands to expand their autonomous region in northern Iraq to include the oil-rich ethnically mixed province of Kirkuk and other areas along Kurdistan’s border with the rest of Iraq have triggered an increasingly heated war of words with Maliki’s Shiite-led central government.
Barzani insisted in campaigning ahead of the July 25 elections that he would not “compromise” on the Kurds’ long-standing claims to the disputed oil hub of Kirkuk.
