AFP: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will visit Tehran this week, his second trip to the neighbouring country in almost two years, an Iranian news agency quoted an Iraqi official as saying on Sunday.
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will visit Tehran this week, his second trip to the neighbouring country in almost two years, an Iranian news agency quoted an Iraqi official as saying on Sunday.
Talabani is due in Iran on Thursday for a two-day visit, Nazim Omar Dabbagh, the Tehran representative of northern Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
Talabani, a Kurd, will be accompanied by a high-level delegation of senior officials from Iraq's ministries of foreign affairs, trade and electricity, Dabbagh added.
According to Iraqi state television, Talabani will stop over in Iran on his way back from a visit to South Korea that starts on Monday.
Talabani previously visited Iran in June 2007.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travelled to Iraq in March 2008 in the first ever visit by an Iranian president to the former arch-foe, symbolising the flourishing ties between Tehran and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
The two Shiite-majority countries fought a war between 1980 and 1988 in which around one million people died.
Relations between the two nations have warmed considerably since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime in Iraq by US-led forces in 2003.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited Tehran in January to seek Iran's help in rebuilding the country and the two neighbours agreed to establish a high-ranking joint committee to improve cooperation.
