August 17, 2008	Sunday	Sha'aban 14, 1429

ARBIL, Aug 16: Iraqi Kurdish officials gave conflicting accounts on Saturday of whether they would withdraw their Peshmerga fighters from a restive province outside the autonomous Kurdistan region.

A Kurdish government minister said the regional authorities had agreed to withdraw the troops from neighbouring Diyala province, but another official said they would stay in place but take orders from the central government in Baghdad.

Kurdish officials have been negotiating with the central government over the presence of 4,000 Kurdish troops, known as Peshmerga, in northeastern Diyala province, a restive part of Iraq outside the Kurdish autonomous zone but home to many Kurds.

The issue is one of several that has increased tensions between Arabs and the minority Kurds in the border areas between Kurdistan and other parts of Iraq.

The Peshmerga, who evolved from guerilla cadres fighting against Saddam Hussein into the official security force of the Kurdish autonomous region, have been patrolling ethnically Kurdish parts of the northeastern province for more than a year.

Jaffar Mustafa, Kurdistan’s Peshmerga minister, said they would withdraw within 10 days as part of a deal struck between the Kurds and Baghdad.

But Mustafa Sowrash, a senior official in the Kurdish PUK party and coordinator for Peshmerga forces in the Sulaimaniya region which borders Diyala, said the Peshmerga would stay in place and would be folded into regular Iraqi forces.

Diyala remains one of the bloodiest areas of Iraq at a time when overall violence in the country has declined sharply.

—Reuters