Sudani is set to meet Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his first visit to Iraq's northern neighbour since he came to power in October, an adviser to the head of the Iraqi government told AFP, speaking anonymously.
"The two main issues are water and the presence of the PKK in northern Iraq," he added, referring to the rebel group that has been fighting the Turkish army for decades.
War-scarred Iraq is now digging ever deeper for water as a frenzy of dam-building, mainly in Turkey, sucks water out of the region's two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
The Tigris and the Euphrates both have their sources in Turkey, and Baghdad has long accused Ankara of withholding water in dams that choke the rivers, dramatically reducing flows into Iraq.
According to official Iraqi statistics from last year, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.
Declining river flows have been made worse by a dire lack of rainfall in recent years, coupled with poor irrigation practices in Iraq that see excessive exploitation of water from the rivers.
Amid criticism, Turkey's ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, ruffled feathers last July when he said, "water is largely wasted in Iraq" and called on people to "use the available water more efficiently".
Sudani will also discuss with Erdogan the presence of rear bases of Kurdish fighters from the Turkish PKK rebels in northern Iraq, which Ankara has repeatedly sought to root out in air and ground operations.
The rebels have kept up a deadly insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
Turkey has dozens of military facilities in northern Iraq for use in its war against the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies blacklist as a "terrorist" group.
In July 2022, Iraq blamed Turkey for artillery strikes on a park in Iraqi Kurdistan that killed nine civilians, including women and children.
Turkey denied its troops were responsible and accused the PKK.
Iran, Iraq sign border protection deal months after strikes on Kurds
Baghdad (AFP) March 19, 2023 -
Iran's top security official on Sunday signed a deal with Iraqi authorities for "protection" of their common border, the Iraqi prime minister's office said, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq's north.
Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish factions, which Iran has accused of serving Western or Israeli interests in the past.
In November, Iran launched cross-border missile and drone strikes against several of the groups in northern Iraq, accusing them of stoking the nationwide protests triggered by the death in custody last September of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.
Ali Shamkhani, who heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council, inked the deal with his Iraqi counterpart Qassem al-Araji during a visit to Baghdad, the statement said.
It comprises "coordination over the protection of common borders", and will also see the "strengthening of cooperation in several areas of security", the statement from the office of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani added.
Shamkhani denounced "vicious activities by counter-revolutionary elements" in northern Iraq, a reference to the Kurdish groups operating in the country, according to Iran's state news agency IRNA.
He said the agreement signed on Sunday "can completely and fundamentally end the vicious actions of these groups," which the Iranian government labels "terrorist."
After the Iranian strikes, Iraq in November announced it would redeploy federal guards on the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran, rather than leaving the responsibility to Kurdish peshmerga forces -- a move welcomed by Tehran.
Factions based in Iraq's mountainous north have in the past waged an armed insurrection against Tehran, but in recent years their activities have declined and experts said they had ceased nearly all military activity.
Shamkani's visit coincides with the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein.
His fall gave birth to a political system that granted the Shiite majority dominance over politics.
Many of these Shiite factions -- including Sudani's backers in parliament -- are supported by Shiite-majority Iran. Relations between the two neighbours have grown ever-closer over the past two decades.
Baghdad had also played a role in mediating a reconciliation between Iran and regional rival Saudi Arabia, hosting several rounds of talks between the two since April 2021.
Riyadh and Tehran had cut all diplomatic ties in 2016 before a surprise Chinese-brokered reconciliation deal was announced earlier this month.
Shamkhani also met the governor of Iraq's central bank and the deputy minister of foreign affairs, according to IRNA.
Tehran is a key trade partner for Baghdad, which in turn is largely dependent on gas and electricity from Iran.
Syria Kurds say nine fighters killed in Iraq crash
Beirut (AFP) March 17, 2023 -
A top commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces was among nine fighters killed when two helicopters crashed in Iraq earlier this week, the group said on Friday.
The SDF, which controls most of the northeast, has been a key ally of the US-led coalition fighting jihadists of the Islamic State group in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
Two helicopters carrying SDF counter-terrorism units to Sulaimaniyah, in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, on Wednesday evening "crashed due to bad weather, leading to the death of nine of our fighters," the group said in a statement.
Among the dead was SDF counter-terrorism commander Shervan Kobani -- a cousin of SDF leader Mazloum Abdi.
The SDF said the delegation was on its way to Iraqi Kurdistan "to exchange security and military expertise".
Its statement did not say whether the two aircraft had collided or give any other details of the crash.
Iraqi Kurdish authorities had said Thursday that five people were killed when a single helicopter came down in Dohuk, the most northerly of the provinces that make up the autonomous region.
The regional government's head of foreign media relations, Lawk Ghafuri, said initial investigations suggested "some" of the dead were members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a rebel group that has been fighting the Turkish army since 1984.
Turkey and its Western allies blacklist the PKK as a terrorist group.
But, despite shrill complaints from Ankara, Washington supports the SDF, which is the Kurdish administration's de facto army in the northeast and led the battle that dislodged IS from its last scrap of territory in Syria in 2019.
Ankara regards the dominant faction in the Syrian Kurdish administration, the People's Protection Units (YPG), as an offshoot of the PKK and has mounted repeated armed incursions to force its fighters out of areas near the border.
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