Senior Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman told AFP that Maliki would hold talks with regional president Massud Barzani, whose re-election was confirmed last week, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"Nuri al-Maliki is going to meet with Barzani and Talabani in Dukan," Othman said, referring to a summer resort 75 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Kurdistan's second-biggest city of Sulaimaniyah.

"This visit is a very positive point and opens dialogue between the two (parties) in order to solve the problems between the central government and Kurdistan."

State television Iraqiya confirmed the visit and said the Kurdish population "is anxious to see a resolution of the problems between the region and Baghdad."

Tensions between Baghdad and Arbil have heightened in recent months, particularly over a disputed swathe of land along Kurdistan's border with the rest of Iraq.

Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have for decades dominated politics in Kurdistan, and their joint list secured 57 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections last month.

The trip will be Maliki's first to the largely autonomous region since becoming Iraq's prime minister in 2006.

Barzani said on Wednesday, shortly after his re-election was confirmed, that Maliki would visit Kurdistan "soon", but did not give any details.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates on a visit to Iraq last week urged Arab and Kurdish leaders to settle their political differences before American troops leave Iraq, which they must do by the end of 2011 under a security accord between Washington and Baghdad.

The top US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, said on Tuesday that tensions between Iraqi Kurds and Arabs over boundaries and oil revenues represent the biggest threat to the country's stability.

Kurdish demands to expand their autonomous region in northern Iraq to include the oil-rich ethnically-mixed province Kirkuk and other districts has triggered an increasingly heated war of words with Maliki's Shiite-led central government.

The US military is closely monitoring the situation and has set up liaison offices with commanders of Kurdish militia and Baghdad government forces to try to prevent tensions from escalating, Odierno said.