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Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs struggle to defuse tensions
The encounter was believed to be the first between them for many months, during which time Barzani has accused Maliki of acting like a tyrant and sidelining Iraq's Kurdish minority.
Maliki's Arab-led government has called oil deals the Kurdish administration made independently with foreign firms illegal, and disputes Kurdish claims to territories it wants included in its largely autonomous northern enclave.
Maliki met with Barzani as well as Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and other Kurdish officials Sunday at the resort town of Dokan. The leaders agreed to establish a committee to solve the outstanding issues.
"The challenges that face the political process require more meetings and cooperation between all Iraqi people," al-Maliki said on Sunday at a press conference with Barzani and Talabani. "I am very optimistic after this meeting." The prime minister, who faces national parliamentary elections on Jan. 16, said last month in Washington that differences between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq were among the most dangerous problems facing his country and that they must be resolved by constitutional means, not by force.
"We discussed the stalled issues and a delegation from the Kurdistan region will visit Baghdad to solve the problems," Barzani said. It was not clear if he would lead the group, but Maliki said he hoped so. "Differences of opinion are very normal because we are building a state on the ruins of [Saddam Hussein's] dictatorship … I think we largely agree, and if there are disputes, they are small," Maliki told reporters.
There have been tense standoffs between Kurdish peshmerga soldiers and Iraqi security forces on the borders of disputed territories. Washington, whose troops have intervened several times, has pushed for Kurdish-Arab peace before its troops withdraw by 2012.
Apart from the formation of a joint Kurdish-Arab committee to look at disputes, no concrete measures were announced. Officials said the meeting was an important goodwill gesture between the two sides, which have been at loggerheads for months. "It is very important to clear the air and to instill confidence about the situation between Baghdad and the region," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd, said on the sidelines.
At the heart of the problem is the fate of oil-producing Kirkuk, which Kurds consider their ancestral home and want to include within the borders of their Kurdish region, but the province's Arabs and Turkmen fear Kurdish hegemony. Last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates met Maliki and Barzani on a two-day visit to Iraq in which he told them time was running out for the US presence in Iraq and that all sides had sacrificed too much in blood and treasure to see security gains lost to political differences, an aide said.
Maliki also visited the town of Halabja, the site of the gassing-to-death of about 5,000 Kurds by Saddam Hussein's forces in March 1988, on Monday. Saddam's government ruthlessly crushed Kurdish dissent and packed Kirkuk with Arabs to bolster his influence there.
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