Baghdad: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on her way today from Saudi Arabia to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi leaders, including Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the American embassy said.

Rice, on a Middle East tour with US President George Bush, was due to hold a media conference with Zebari in Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone early in the afternoon, the Embassy said in a statement.

Rice was last in Iraq on December 18,when she held talks with politicians in the capital and the ethnically tense northern oil city of Kirkuk.

Her visit comes days after the Iraqi parliament passed a long-stalled key law allowing former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party back into public life.

The passing of the law was one of 18 "benchmarks" Washington has listed as measures of political reconciliation in Iraq, deeply divided by sectarian strife.

Source : PTI