BAGHDAD, March 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi Kurdish leaders headed to Baghdad on Monday to resume talks with the Shiites in an effort to hammer out their differences on forming a new government before the first parliament meeting due on Wednesday.

    "There are disagreements about two points. The first is the fate of the peshmerga (militia), and the second one is concerning Kirkuk," said Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

    "Our negotiations with the Shiite alliance continue," Talabani told reporters in Sulaimaniyah, some 330 km northeast of Baghdad, before he headed to Baghdad for Wednesday's first session of the new 275-member national assembly.

    Kurdish leaders wanted to seal an agreement with the election-winning Shiite list, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), to form an alliance of more than two-thirds of the parliamentary seats to leadthe political process in the war-ravaged country.

    "We have made good progress. We have a common understanding with the UIA that we should establish an Iraqi state based on the principles of federalism and respecting human rights and women's rights," Talabani said.

    "We need a government with all parties," he said, "with Allawi and our brother Sunnis. We insist all Iraqis should have a role."

    Iraqi Kurds, comprising less than 20 percent of the national population, want their tens of thousands peshmerga fighters to continue to exist in their autonomous region in northern Iraq and that no other Iraqi force can enter the autonomous zone without permission from the regional authority.

    The Kurds also want guarantees from the future interim government that it will work on the resettlement of tens of thousands of Kurds who were expelled from Kirkuk by Saddam Hussien over the past three decades. Enditem