Iraq's largely autonomous northern Kurdish region, which comprises three provinces, will hold its own local elections in September.
To get to two-thirds, the council will certainly need the support of the alliance that swept most of the vote in Kurdish northern Iraq.
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This follows reports that Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq had formed an alliance with a Kurdish party across the border in Syria.
He fled to Kurdish-run northern Iraq when the allegations emerged in 2011, and later visited other countries.
Last week, American forces raided an Iranian liaison office in the city of Irbil in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
The stability in Northern Iraq, keeping this Kurdish situation under control, how important is that to U.S. foreign policy?
It accuses the PKK of launching attacks on Turkish targets from secret bases in the mountainous and semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
The organisation still has several thousand fighters, many of whom are based in the Qandil mountains of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Significantly, the military chiefs of Turkey and Kuwait met in Ankara this week, along with representatives from the main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.
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The two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq have a firm base among their own people but would be unlikely contenders for national power.
That's northern Iraq, where the Kurdish people live and live in - I gather, Annie - more harmony now than you've seen in quite some time.
Ms. MARCUS: No, the Kurdish government in Northern Iraq, which runs the autonomous Kurdistan region, is very much opposed to the PKK's presence on its territory.
He added that a buildup of Turkish troops along Turkey's border with Iraq is being carried out to ensure the country is not flooded with Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq.
Turkey has been taking cross-border military action, including airstrikes and artillery shelling, against the PKK in retaliation to attacks by the group on targets in Turkey from bases in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
So, besides haggling for a better aid package, Turkey is pressing America to let it deploy its troops freely in northern Iraq to prevent any Kurdish uprising and to stop a tidal wave of refugees crossing its borders.
The second conference in November in Istanbul, Turkey, was largely overshadowed by an increase in fighting between Turkish forces and Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.
KIRKUK, Iraq (CNN) -- A battalion from the 173rd Airborne Brigade has reinforced U.S. troops and Kurdish forces in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, Maj.
Al-Saadiya is close to Khanaqin, a predominantly Kurdish area of the province in dispute between the central government and the autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq.
Top Turkish army generals did not attend an important bilateral conference in the United States last year, following American criticism of Turkey's cross-border military offensive against Kurdish PKK rebels in Northern Iraq.
In fact, the first of the major northern towns to fall to Iraqi Kurdish fighters under the banner of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a new face in this town called Khanaqin, about 80 miles north of Baghdad.
In December, Jordan said, he met with Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to ask permission for CNN to send journalists into areas of northern Iraq that had been under Kurdish control since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Street celebrations also erupted in Erbil, a city in a Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq.
For its part, Turkey has said it will not tolerate the creation of a Kurdish-run region in northern Syria.
The United States is concerned that a buildup of Turkish troops in northern Iraq could spark a conflict with Kurdish groups that control much of the area.
Indeed, the Washington Post reports today that the U.S. provided Turkey with intelligence so they could target bases of the PKK, the rebel Kurdish group that stages attacks on Kurdish forces from bases in northern Iraq.
Despite the fanfare surrounding last week's arrival of 1, 000 American paratroopers at a muddy airstrip 30 miles north of Irbil, and the constant flow of men and materiel to the region, Kurdish officials admit that the northern front will be a considerably downsized affair.
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U.S. and British fliers also enforce a ban on Iraqi aircraft in the "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq, established to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minority populations after the Gulf War.
The KDP, based in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah, represents the other half of the Kurdish population.
Even then, the mustachioed warriors of Iraqi Kurdistan will pay more attention to the battle unfolding on and across their northern borders between the Turkish army and Turkey's own Kurdish rebels than to any new adventures in Iraq.
Turkey has launched ground, air and artillery attacks on suspected PKK bases in northern Iraq, which is generally under the control of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government and its forces.
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