ANKARA, Oct 8 (AFP) - Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani will hold talks in Turkey next week in a bid to iron out differences between the two sides over the future status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Turkish officials said Friday.
Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), will meet with Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul on Monday.
"We will discuss what should be done to restore stability and peace in Iraq," Gul told the NTV news channel.
"We see some dangers in this process and we will talk about them as well," Gul said, adding that the situation in ethnically volatile Kirkuk would be one of the main topics.
Ankara is uneasy that the Iraqi Kurds are plotting to take control of the northern city, which also has a large population of Turkmens, an ethnic minority of Turkish descent.
Turkey has repeatedly warned against attempts to upset the demography of Kirkuk, which the Iraqi Kurds say was overwhelmingly Kurdish in the 1950s before Baghdad started a deliberate campaign of "Arabization."
Thousands of Arabs were encouraged during Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule to settle in Kirkuk and the Kurds are now trying to chase them out.
Ankara fears that Kurdish control of the area's oil resources could further strengthen the Iraqi Kurds whom it suspects of plotting to break away from Baghdad.
Such a prospect, Ankara worries, could fan separatist sentiment among its own restive Kurds in adjoining southeast Turkey.