Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi interim prime minister, has held a long closed-door meeting with Massoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan province, in Salah al-Din resort in northern Iraq. The Sunday meeting started in the morning and carried on until the evening, with the two politicians holding a news conference afterwards in which they announced they had agreed to form a broad-based national unity government. The visit of al-Jaafari, who leads the Shia al-Dawa party, to predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq came after the visit of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, chairman of the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the dominant Shia party in Iraq. Kurdish parties had shown dissatisfaction with al-Jaafari's performance and accused him of neglecting his partners in the political process. Sunday's visit was the first by the prime minister since he was elected in mid-2004. The race to meet and discuss the political situation in Iraq after December's parliamentary elections included the Iraqi Sunni Arab political parties.