"The aim of this visit is to be able to establish strategic and solid relations with Turkey," Iraq's President Jalal Talabani said after talks with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul.

"We want our cooperation to be a model relationship for the Middle East," Talabani said through an interpreter, adding that Baghdad wanted closer energy, economic, cultural and political ties.

Welcoming Talabani to Ankara for his first visit as head of state, Gul made a similar call and said both countries would hold further talks to work out the detail of what he said was the common vision for bilateral ties.

"I believe that if we tap into the great potential between Turkey and Iraq, we will produce a great neighbourly relationship," he said.

The warm messages followed recent tensions between the neighbours over a week-long ground incursion by the Turkish army into northern Iraq to hunt rebels from Kurdistan Workers's Party (PKK), which ended last week.

Turkey charges that more than 2,000 PKK militants use northern Iraq as a base for their separatist campaign against Ankara and accuses Iraqi Kurds of tolerating the rebels.

At the time, Baghdad slammed the incursion as an unacceptable violation of its sovereignty, while the United States feared it might escalate into a broader conflict between Turkish forces and Iraqi Kurds.

The Turkish military warned this week that it could carry out more cross-border strikes on the rebels if need be.

Neither Gul nor Talabani directly addressed the incursion, but when queried by reporters, the Iraqi President, a Kurd himself, said Iraq would not allow illegal groups to launch attacks from Iraqi soil.

"We are obviously opposed to an organisation that launches attacks against a neighbouring country and we will not allow it," Talabani said, adding that Baghdad and Ankara would hold talks on a "comprehensive security agreement".

He explained that the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq had been ordered to pressure PKK militants to either lay down their arms or leave the region.

Gul described the PKk as a "common curse" and called on the rebels to disarm.

"Let me underline that the Turkish state will not tolerate those who are implicated in terrorism," Gul said when asked whether Ankara would make any political overtures to the rebels.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Parliament authorised cross-border military action against the rebels in October, paving the way for the ground offensive.

Washington backed the Turkish incursion by supplying its NATO ally with intelligence, but pressed for a swift withdrawal on fears that it could lead to tensions in a relatively stable region of conflict-torn Iraq.

Gul had invited Talabani to visit on February 21, hours after Turkish forces stormed into northern Iraq to crack down on PKK camps.

"This operation was a message on how determined we are" to stop the PKK from using northern Iraq as a safe haven, Turkey's special representative for Iraq Murat Ozcelik said in an interview with NTV television ahead of the visit.

Baghdad has acknowledged the threat the PKK poses to Turkey and "this gives us an opportunity to re-focus on diplomacy in 2008," he said.

"Relations...will gain a new momentum and we will enter a period in which a new page will be turned," he added.

Talabani is expected to lunch with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and have talks with representatives of a Turkish-Iraqi business group on Saturday before wrapping up his visit.