Gates visits Kurdish leaders in Iraq

Published April 08, 2011

| Associated Press

IRBIL, IRAQ –  On the eve of the eighth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is meeting with Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq.

Gates arrived Friday in Irbil for talks with Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government, which is at the center of an unresolved struggle for power and resources in the semi-autonomous north.

It is Gates' 13th trip to Iraq as Pentagon chief. He told U.S. troops Thursday that this probably is his last visit to the country that American forces invaded in March 2003. Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003.