Biden visits Kirkuk, Kurdistan on Tuesday – source

Iraq-Biden BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden will head on Tuesday to Kirkuk then to Kurdistan, a presidential source said on Tuesday. “Security preparations are underway to receive the new vice president in Kirkuk on Tuesday (Jan. 13) after meeting with President Jalal Talabani and his Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi today (Jan. 12),” the source told IraqiNews.com news agency. “Biden will head for Kurdistan to meet Kurdish President Massoud Barzani after his visit to Kirkuk,” he added. A presidential source had said earlier that Joe Biden arrived in Baghdad on Monday on a surprise visit to Iraq. Biden voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq but later became a critic of the war and the way in which President George W. Bush was executing it. He is best known in Iraq as the author of a 2006 plan to divide the country into self-governing Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves — an idea that offended many Iraqi politicians and was quietly put on the back burner as violence ebbed. SH (P)/SR 1