BAGHDAD (AP) — A deal brokered by Iraq's president this week gives the central government and the Kurdish minority an opportunity to step back from a military standoff that has threatened to tip the country back into armed conflict just a year after the last American troops left. The Kurds, a different ethnic group from Iraq's majority Arabs, have their own armed fighters and enjoy considerable control over an increasingly prosperous enclave in Iraq's mountainous north. Thursday's accord calls for the eventual withdrawal of Iraqi military and Kurdish fighters who in recent weeks moved into disputed areas where both seek to extend their influence. There is no timetable governing the pullout...
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