Iraqi Kurdish faction to withdraw militias

The Kurdish Democratic Party has announced that it will withdraw all armed militias from large towns under its control in northern Iraq over the next two months.

A statement said the decision was taken at a meeting in the town of Erbil, presided over by the KDP leader, Massoud Barzani.

A spokesman for the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said the withdrawal was one of ITS main demands for the normalisation of relations between the two groups.

More than three thousand people are estimated to have died in fighting between the KDP and the PUK since they fell out in 1994, two years after an agreement was made to share power in the mainly-Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service