p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font: 14.0px Times; text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none; color: #347ab7; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #347ab7} span.s3 {font: 15.0px Calibri; font-kerning: none} Iraq is ready to help steer the region away from confrontation and toward integration, Iraqi President Barham Salih told the sixth annual Sulaimani Forum on March 6. Everyone can share “a degree of success” in Iraq’s reconstruction, he said, adding that Iraq can “be a bridge to the economies of the region by linking the infrastructure between Iraq and the Gulf and Turkey between Iran and the Arab region and the Mediterranean.”

Expanding on these themes in an interview with Mina Al-Oraibi of The National, Salih added, “It is incumbent on us as this new team leading Iraq to move and push forward the Iraqi agenda that we consider to be vital for a new regional order based on economic integration and collaboration among the nations of the region, but also internationally in the fight against extremism.”

The Iraqi president envisions “a network of ‘interrelated interests’ such as regional railways, pipelines and free trade zones across Iraq’s borders with all of its neighbors,” Ali Mamouri reports.

“These calls for more openness toward Arab states weren't limited to the Kurdish and Arab Sunni figures alone,” Mamouri writes, “but even Iraqi Shiite figures who are known as close allies of Iran demanded rapprochement with Arabs and called for Baghdad to play an intermediary role between Iraq’s neighboring countries.” For example, Ammar Hakim, head of the Hikma movement, said, “Iraq must be the peace gate of the region.”