U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney arrived Tuesday morning in
Arbil. He met Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani and the Prime Minister
Nechirvan Barzani to discuss political developments.
Visiting US Vice President Dick Cheney urged the Kurdish leadership to help
forge a long-term US-Iraq security agreement and pass laws seen as key to
national reconciliation.
"We are certainly counting on President Barzani's leadership to help us conclude
a new strategic relationship between the United States and Iraq as well as
advance crucial peaces of national legislation in the months ahead," Cheney said
before heading off to Oman on the next leg of his Middle East tour.
Their talks had also been expected to focus on Turkish operations against
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas following a major air and ground
offensive by Turkey earlier this month.
"We will continue to play our positive role, to be part of the solution, and not
part of the problem," Barzani said through an interpreter.
"We will be part of the solution for all the efforts inside of Iraq and out for
the neighbouring countries."
Cheney said the United States and Iraq's Kurds had built up a "special
friendship" during an operation that created no-fly zones over Kurdish areas
after the 1991 Gulf War to protect them from ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's
brutal campaigns of repression and gas attacks.
