BAGHDAD, Dec 11 (AFP) - A senior Iraqi parliamentarian lashed out at the
United States Tuesday for "meddling in Iraq's internal affairs" by sending a
high-level team to Iraqi Kurdistan, which is off-bounds for Baghdad.

"This visit amounts to yet another aggressive measure by the USadministration
against Iraq and interference in its internal affairs," Salem al-Kubaisi told AFP.

The US team's trip to northern Iraq constitutes "a flagrant violation of all
international conventions," said Kubaisi, who heads the Arab and international
relations committee of the Iraqi National Assembly (parliament).

It shows that "the United States, the world's (sole) superpower, flouts laws and
international conventions," he added.

The US State Department said Monday it had begun mediating a long-running
dispute between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP), which have controlled a Kurdish enclave in northern
Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Deputy spokesman Philip Reeker said a high-level US team led by Ryan Crocker, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, was now in northern Iraq in a bid to bring the rival factions together.