Shiite party member says Kurdistan visit to boost ties with Kurds

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A key member of the Shiite Dawa Party / Iraq Organization said on Saturday that the visit paid by the party’s delegation to the Iraqi Kurdistan region and meetings with the main Kurdish parties offered a good chance to strengthen cooperation with the Kurdish leaders. “The delegation had talks with the leaders of the of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on joint commissions as well as coordination between the representatives of the two parties inside the Iraqi parliament,” Qassem al-Sahlani told IraqiNews.com news agency. On the delegation’s talks with Iraqi Kurdistan region President Massoud Barazani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Sahlani said the two sides agreed on the importance of easing tension between the autonomous region and the central government and setting the stage for restoring relations back to normal. On Thursday (April 2), the delegation arrived in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya to discuss with Kurdish leaders a host of pending issues between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). 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 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. Problems between the central government and the Kurdistan RegionG revolve around the law on oil and gas and the oil contracts singed by the Kurdish government with foreign corporations without prior referral to Baghdad, in addition to the financial allocations from the federal state budget to the Kurdish peshmerga forces and failure to settle the issue of article 140 of the Iraqi constitution pertaining to disputed areas, including the oil-rich Kirkuk. Kurds believe that Kirkuk should be part of the autonomous region, contrary to the views of Arab political circles. AmR (S)/SR 1