Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will visit Tehran on Monday for talks with hard-line counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expected to focus on Iran's possible role in curbing bloodshed in the war-ravaged neighbour.
Talabani had been scheduled to fly to Tehran on Saturday but postponed the visit due to a curfew in Baghdad imposed after a string of car bombs on Thursday killed 202 people and wounded 256.
He is now set to travel to Iraq's eastern neighbour on Monday, his spokesman told AFP.
"I can confirm that the president will travel to Tehran on Monday. His visit is for a couple of days," Hiwa Othman said.
Talabani's visit comes amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts by Washington and Baghdad aimed at finding a way to prevent the sectarian violence tearing at the very fabric of Iraqi society from descending into all-out civil war.
More than 300 people have died across Iraq since Thursday alone in one of the deadliest bouts of violence since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Thursday's car bombings, which targetted mainly Shiites, followed by reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques the following day prompted the authorities to lock down Baghdad for three days under a tight curfew.
The meeting between the presidents of the two former arch-rivals comes amid growing pressure on Washington to review its coldshouldering of Iran which it accuses of arming Iraq's Shiite militias to fight Sunni Arabs in the ongoing sectarian conflict.
The White House is concerned about Iran's influence with militia groups as Shiite-dominated Iran has extensive ties with Iraqi Shiite parties and politicians, many of whom took refuge in Iran during former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's rule.
Last Monday, the White House expressed scepticism that the Tehran summit would yield positive results.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said senior Iraqi and Iranian officials had met in the past, "and we haven't seen much by way of follow-up on it. The problem is not what they say, the problem is what they do," he said.
For Iran, Talabani's visit is an important step to exert its growing importance in the region, something which Washington is yet to approve, although Britain has urged that Tehran must be roped into Iraqi affairs.
Kurdish lawmaker Mahmud Othman hoped that the visit would bring some benefits to Baghdad, but said that "a lot depends on the relations between the US and Iran."
"I have always maintained that if we leaders are strong enough inside to tackle the problems then other countries will chase us to develop relations."
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was confident Talabani's trip would result in important agreements that would benefit both countries and the region as a whole.
The bloodletting in Iraq, which according to the United Nations left at least 3,709 people dead in October alone, is expected to top the agenda when US President George W. Bush meets Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan on November 29.
US Vice President Dick Cheney began preparing the ground for Bush's visit during a visit to Saudi Arabia on Saturday during which he sought support from Riyadh to solve Iraqi crisis.
For Talabani, the visit to Tehran will be his second since the fall of Saddam in 2003.
A Kurdish former rebel who fought Saddam, Talabani enjoyed good relations with Iran even before the US-led invasion to topple the former Iraqi leader.
In the mid-1990s, when his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan battled with the rival rebel movement of Massud Barzani, now Kurdish regional president, he drew support from Iran while his rival won the backing of Saddam and Turkey.
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