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During the visit of the Iranian minister of foreign affairs Munochahir Mottaki to Kurdistan Region and his meeting with Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani and the senior officials in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and KDP, both sides reached an agreement to stop the Iranian artillery shelling on the border villages in Kurdistan region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iran have reached an initial agreement to stop the Iranian shelling of Kurdish villages within the region's territories, according to a Kurdish official.
"Under the agreement, which has come into effect as of Saturday February 14, Iranian artillery will avoid shelling the villages and the populated areas...," the Kurdistan regional Government (KRG) representative in Tehran Nazim Omar Dabbagh,said in an interview with the London based al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.
"From now on, residents of these villages will be able to return to their houses, which they left as a result of the constant Iranian artillery shelling throughout the past period," Dabbagh added.
The agreement does not include mountainous areas, where the Iranian Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) fighters are believed to be based, he explained.
The PJAK, or the (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane) (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan), is a militant Kurdish nationalist group based in northern Iraq that has been carrying out attacks Iranian forces in the Kurdistan Province of Iran (Eastern Kurdistan) and other Kurdish-inhabited areas.
PJAK is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (Koma Civaken Kurdistan or KCK), which is an alliance of outlawed Kurdish groups and divisions led by an elected Executive Council.
Led by Haji Ahmadi, the PJAK's objective is to establish a semi-autonomous regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, Turkey and Syria similar to Kurdistan region in Iraq.
Since 2004 the PJAK took up arms for self-rule in Kurdistan province northwestern of Iran (Iranian Kurdistan,Eastern Kurdistan). Half the members of PJAK are women. The PJAK has about 3,000 armed militiamen.
The United States on February 4, 2009 added the Iranian Kurdish PJAK militant group opposed to Iran to its list of terrorist organizations.