IRAQ: PRESIDENT TALABANI IN IRAN SEEKING KURD EXECUTION HALT

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani flew to Tehran to appeal for the lives of Iranian Kurds sentenced to death, a newspaper website reported.
"President Talabani pays a secret visit to Tehran to ask President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to intervene with the chief of the judiciary to avoid the execution of Iranian Kurds," said the Sulaimaniyah-based Awina journal.
Officials in Baghdad could not immediately confirm the visit.
Kurdish lawmakers in Iran last week asked the judiciary in the Islamic republic to reconsider issuing death sentences on people from the Kurdish minority, fearing it was alienating the ethnic group from the regime.
Iran's ILNA news agency reported that an unspecified number of Kurdish MPs had addressed their concern in a letter to judiciary chief Sadeq Larijani.