Shiite party delegation arrives in Sulaimaniya

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: A delegation from the Dawa Party / Iraq Organization arrived on Thursday in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya to discuss with leaders of the two main Kurdish parties a host of pending issues between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG), a Kurdish party source said. “The delegation is scheduled to have talks with the leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) on outstanding issues,” a PUK official told IraqiNews.com news agency. The delegation was received at the Sulaimaniya International Airport by Mulla Bakhtyar, a member of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s PUK politburo board and other PUK officials. The Dawa Party / Iraq Organization is a wing that defected from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party in 2000. The delegation comprised Minister of Education Khudeir al-Khoza’ai, Trade Minister Abdulfalah al-Sudani and leading party members Qassem al-Sahlani and Hassan Saeed. In a press conference held upon the delegation’s arrival, Khoza’ai said that the delegation is heading on Friday to the city of Arbil for talks on issues between the central and autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region’s governments. The city of Sulaimaniya lies 364 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (S) 1