United Arab Emirates to forgive Iraq's $4 billion debt
BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri Maliki traveled today to the United Arab Emirates, where he won a promise that Iraq's $4 billion in debt would be forgiven.
The visit was a significant step forward in efforts by Iraq's Shiite-dominated government to patch up relations with Sunni Arab nations in the region. Maliki's administration has been criticized for its close ties with Shiite-led Iran and accused of failing to deal firmly with Shiite militias at home.
The government's crackdown starting this spring on militias in the southern Iraq cities of Basra and Amarah and the giant Shiite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad helped cleared the way for renewed diplomatic contacts.
In addition to canceling Iraq's debt, Emirates leader Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan pledged to send an ambassador to Baghdad and help with the reconstruction of holy shrines in Iraq damaged by years of war and civil strife.
Iraq's finance minister had said last week that several other Sunni Arab countries were planning to establish embassies in Baghdad. Besides the United Arab Emirates, he named Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Meanwhile, after two relatively quiet days, violence resumed today.
In Anbar province, a suicide car bomb struck a joint Iraqi-American checkpoint near Rawah, about 165 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing five Iraqi police and injuring 18 people, a police source said.
He said helicopters took away the American wounded.
A roadside bomb targeting a leader of a minor Kurdish political party killed seven people in a part of northern Diyala province that Kurds claim. Mohammed Ramadhan Esa of the National Kurdistan Party survived, but the explosion killed his wife, three of his children, his sister-in-law and two guards, police said. Esa was among four people wounded.
A car bomb went off near the entrance of Shaab neighborhood in northern Baghdad, killing six people and injuring 14, including three police officers.
An area on the north of Sadr City was sealed off today after shooting erupted Saturday night. Witnesses said a joint U.S.-Iraqi force conducting an operation in the area, once a stronghold of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr, exchanged fire with several gunmen.
doug.smith@latimes.com
Times staff writer Raheem Salman and special correspondents in Baghdad and Baquba contributed to this report.
