Kurdistan Observer

A prominent Iraqi Kurdish leader will visit Turkey to discuss the situation in Iraq ahead of a meeting of the Iraqi opposition in the United States, a Turkish government official said Monday.

Jalal Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which administers mainly Kurdish northern Iraq along with another Kurdish faction, will arrive late Tuesday and meet with Turkish diplomats Wednesday, the official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

Talabani will then travel on to Washington for a meeting of Iraqi opposition forces, which the United States has long tried to unite against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Turkey, a key NATO ally that hosts a major US air base, is opposed to US plans to oust the Iraqi regime, fearing that a war at its doorstep could further damage the crisis-hit Turkish economy and spark unrest in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, which borders northern Iraq.

PUK and another Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have been running northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, outside Baghdad's control and under the protection of a US-enforced no-fly zone.

Turkey worries that turmoil in Iraq could lead to an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, which could in turn fan separatist sentiment among its own Kurds and rekindle a recently subdued Kurdish rebellion for self-rule.