BAGHDAD (AA) - August 12, 2012 - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has said he would favor boosted relations between Turkey and his central government in Baghdad.
"We favor the strengthening of relations between the central governments. And we want relations with Turkey to be better than they were before on this condition," Maliki told the Anadolu Agency.
"We would be happy if Turkey wants to improve relations not with Iraqi groups but with the central government. We do support the development of relations in that direction."
Maliki also touched on tensions between the central government and the regional Kurdish administration in the country's north when Baghdad sent federal troops to control a border crossing with Syria, putting them in confrontation with the peshmerga forces.
"I do not consider it as a tension because Iraq has a federal structure which authorizes the Iraqi army to deploy anywhere inside Iraq including regional administrations," Maliki said.
"The peshmerga misinterpreted the deployment of federal troops as an attack on their own administration but the problem has been solved when the true nature of the deployment was understood which was made due to the developments in Syria," Maliki said.
