Baghdad - Kurdish leaders headed on Sunday to Baghdad to
discuss with Iraqi officials the crisis in the district of Khanaqin, a
cabinet secretary in the Kurdistan regional government said.
The delegation will remain in Baghdad for three or four days, and
will tackle other areas of dispute with senior Iraqi officials, the
official said.
Tensions between the central government and the Kurdish region have
been running high following the deployment of mainstream Iraqi forces
into the district.
It is located about 100 kilometres north-east of Baquba in Diyala
province, and is claimed by Kurds although it lies outside the Kurdish
region.
The deployment of Iraqi federal troops into the primarily Kurdish
northern districts of Diyala province is a sensitive issue, and
Kurdish leaders have long sought to incorporate the area into their
autonomous region.
A day after the deployment and the withdrawal of the Kurdish
peshmerga (militia) fighters, thousands of Khanaqin residents took to
the streets in protest.
Iraqi officials said the deployment is part of a large-scale
security operation Bashaer al-Kheir (Promise of Good) that was started
in July to track down armed groups in Diyala.
Some observers however say the deployment could hold the political
function of pushing Kurdish forces back behind the blue line created
in 1991 by the US-led coalition to define the limits of the semi-
autonomous Kurdish region.
On Friday, Iraqi member of parliament Humam Hamoudi from the main
Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Coalition (UIC) told the Voices of Iraq
news agency that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Kurds any
Peshmerga fighter deployed outside the blue line would face legal
action.
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