BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will leave on a three-state Gulf tour on Saturday to promote Iraq's security under his national reconciliation plan and win new investment in Iraq's economy, an aide said on Friday.
Maliki will visit Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in his first foreign trip since being sworn in as prime minister on May 20, he added.
The visit to the three Sunni Arab states, expected to start in Kuwait, in marked contrast to his predecessor and fellow Shi'ite Islamist Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose first foreign trip was to Shi'ite, non-Arab Iran.
Saudi Arabia is the state most closely identified with the austere Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam. Many of the foreign Islamists fighting to overthrow Maliki's government and expel U.S. forces adhere to Wahhabi teachings.
Many of the foreign fighters who have been killed or captured in Iraq have been Saudis, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
The aide said Maliki would have talks with King Abdullah on security and investment. Similar discussions would be held in the Emirates and neighbouring Kuwait, which Iraq invaded in 1990 under Saddam Hussein.
The United States has been urging Iraq's Arab neighbours to do more to invest and reduce the isolation Baghdad has endured in the Arab world since the U.S. invasion of 2003. Al Qaeda attacks on Arab diplomats last year, however, have further restricted Arab diplomatic missions in Baghdad.
Iraq is trying to persuade Kuwait to drop claims for war reparations and to settle differences over control of oil fields lying on their border.
Maliki's 24-point national reconciliation plan is aimed at ending the three-year-old Sunni insurgency and communal bloodshed between Shi'ites and minority Sunnis that has pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war.
It is short on detail and has been criticised by Sunni leaders for failing to provide a clear timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and for his refusal to talk to Saddam loyalists, who comprise the core of the insurgency.
Analysts say any deepening of the civil conflict in Iraq could draw in neighbouring states on opposing sides, with Iran lining up behind the majority Shi'ites and Arab states like Saudi Arabia backing fellow Sunnis.
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