Turkish foreign minister to visit Iraqi Kurdistan

This visit will strengthen relations between Turkey and the region, and also has positive effects in the economic sphere.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Iraq's Kurdistan region soon as part of Ankara's efforts to end a conflict with Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, officials said on Tuesday.

Davutoglu's visit to the regional capital Arbil, the first by a Turkish minister to the autonomous region, will include talks with Kurdish president Massud Barzani, according to Safeen Dazai, foreign affairs spokesman for Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Dazai could not immediately confirm the date of the visit, but said it would be in the "coming days."

- He will discuss political and economic issues with officials in the Kurdistan government, and also the possibility of opening a Turkish consulate in the region - Dazai told AFP.

- This visit will strengthen relations between Turkey and the region, and also has positive effects in the economic sphere. -

Turkey has been involved in a 25-year-long bloody conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has rear bases in Iraq, that has claimed around 45,000 lives.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

Earlier this year, Ankara announced that it was working on a raft of reforms expected to give greater freedoms to the country's 12 million Kurds, but it has yet to announce details.

The government rejects dialogue with the rebels and has urged them to either surrender or face military action.

Turkish MPs first approved cross-border operations into Iraq in 2007, and since then, the Turkish military has mounted a string of air raids against suspected PKK rear-bases, using intelligence supplied by the United States.

In February 2008, it even carried out a week-long ground incursion.