U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had more pressing problems like winning the backing of the Kurds for a new agreement between Washington and Baghdad which will define the future of bilateral relations and also rallying Massoud Barzani's support for Kurdish contributions to the national reconciliation efforts in Iraq when he visited Erbil on Tuesday.

The Kurds irked by the all out U.S. support for Ankara that allowed Turkish military to launch air and land raids into Iraq against the PKK terrorist hideouts in the Kurdish region have this time gone out of their way to welcome Cheney.

In an unusual gesture Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani's wife who never attends such functions was on hand when Massoud Barzani welcomed Cheney and his wife at his headquarters near Erbil.

Barzani refused to meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visited Iraq recently protesting U.S. backing to Turkey in the fight against the PKK bases in northern Iraq. That was considered a political mistake ion the part of Barzani but this time the Kurdish leaders made sure that fence mending was properly done.

Barzani and Cheney reportedly did not play up the dispute on U.S. backing for Turkey against the PKK and preferred to give the image that the close ties that have been established between Washington and the Kurds over the years remains intact.

The U.S. currently needs the backing of the Kurds as well as the Arab Shiites and Sunnis to push through vital legislation to help the national reconciliation process.

The oil law that will help ease the anger of the Sunnis who fear they will be denied Iraq's oil money has been stalled because of Kurdish objections.

In recent weeks a tribunal ruled that the Kurds were wrong in their objections to the oil law.

The U.S. is also eager to recruit the backing of Barzani to iron out an agreement which will define the future of the legal status of American presence in Iraq in the future.
On Monday, Cheney had talks with officials in Baghdad. Topics ranged from security in Iraq to Iran's rising influence in Mideast, but a key item was about forging a long-term agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, plus a narrower deal to define the legal basis for continued U.S. troop presence.

The deal would take the place of a U.N. Security Council resolution that expires in December, the same time Bush will be preparing to leave office. The administration says the deal will not seek permanent U.S. bases in Iraq or codify troop levels, nor tie the hands of a future commander in chief as some Democrats fear.
Iraqi sources said President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, made clear on Monday that even though the Kurds have a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, they were completely committed to making the area work within an Iraqi state.

In Erbil Cheney said "We are certainly counting on President Barzani's leadership to help us conclude a new strategic relationship between the United States and Iraq, as well as to pass crucial pieces of national legislation in the months ahead," Cheney said.
Barzani said the Kurds are committed to being "part of the solution, and not part of the problem."

"I would like to reiterate our commitment that we will continue to play a positive role in order to build a new Iraq — an Iraq with a foundation of a great federal, democratic, pluralistic, free Iraq," Barzani said.

Cheney extended an olive branch to Barzani to mend fences. He said the United States and Iraq's Kurds had built up a "special friendship" during an operation that created no-fly zones over Kurdish areas after the 1991 Gulf war to protect them from ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's brutal campaigns of repression and gas attacks. "It is important to lay the foundation of the kind of relationship that will bind our people together for the future as we build on the experience and shared sacrifices of the past," he said.

Cheney will be in Ankara soon where Turkish leaders will ask him about his contacts in Erbil. However, it is clear that a recent visit by Talabani to Ankara has convinced Barzani that he has to open a new chapter with Turkey and thus his talks with Cheney on Turkey was reconciliatory.

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