"We want a federation and a multiparty system and a united Iraq," said KDP official Jamal Mohammed Ali as he handed out copies the Arabic-language Karbat at the Palestine Hotel where the US military and many foreign correspondents here are based.

"It is a message that media here are free and can now tell the truth."

He added the paper had opened five distribution offices in Baghdad this week and that the KDP aimed to become a major weekly in the capital with a print run of some 100,000 copies. It was published in the northern city of Arbil.

The KDP led by Massoud Barzani has controlled an enclave in northern Iraq with its rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war.

Distributing its newspaper in the Iraqi capital would have been unthinkable under Saddam's regime, which kept the ethnic minority under its thumb and killed thousands of Kurds in brutal crackdowns following the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and the 1991 conflict.

SPACE.WIRE