06 October 2004	Wednesday	20 Shaban 1425

BAGHDAD, Oct 5: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw met Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Tuesday after talks with Kurdish leaders during an unannounced trip to the country.

The two men went into talks in Mr Allawi's office in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, which also houses the British and US embassies and most of the country's key institutions.

Mr Straw met the new Iraqi strongman shortly after his return from a two-and-a-half week tour, during which he mustered more support from his key allies. "He is here to talk about bilateral relations, the political and electoral process and what more Britain can do to help Iraq," said embassy spokeswoman Victoria Whitford.

Travelling from Amman, Mr Straw met Britain's ambassador to Iraq, Edward Chaplin, in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as well as members of the provincial council before flying further north to the resort of Lake Dokhan in Iraqi Kurdistan, she said.

There, Mr Straw met Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - one of the two main political parties in the Kurdish north. Whitford said that for security reasons she was unable to reveal further details about the trip, but that it had nothing to do with an ongoing drama surrounding Kenneth Bigley, a British engineer held hostage in Iraq and threatened with beheading. "The visit had been planned" for a while, she added. -AFP