DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Days after President Bush accused Syria of encouraging the violence in Iraq, President Jalal Talabani on Sunday will become the highest-level Iraqi official to visit this country in more than 24 years.His visit, announced on Iraqi television and confirmed by a Talabani spokesman Friday, aims to seal the ties between the two neighbors after they restored diplomatic relations in December, cut in 1982 amid ideological disputes between the Syrian government and Saddam Hussein's regime.
The Iraqi president will arrive Sunday and stay for four or five days, Talabani's spokesman Kamaran Qaradaghi told the Associated Press. State-run Iraqiya television said Talabani will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad and sign security and economic agreements. Qaradaghi would not elaborate on Talabani's goals for the visit. But the Iraqi president was expected to discuss security on the country's long desert border with Syria.