President Joe Biden will welcome Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi to the White House this month, his office said Friday.

The July 26 meeting will "highlight the strategic partnership between the United States and Iraq," the White House said in a statement.

Kadhemi and US envoy Brett McGurk discussed the withdrawal of troops from Iraq Thursday in Baghdad.

Some 3,500 foreign troops are still on Iraqi territory, including 2,500 Americans, who have been posted to help fight the Islamic State group since 2014.

In Washington, Kadhemi is expected to push for a concrete timetable of American troop withdrawal. The implementation of their departure could take years.

Iraq, long an arena for bitter rivalry between the US and Iran despite their shared enmity towards IS, has seen growing numbers of rocket and drone attacks on American targets in recent months.

Kadhemi's meeting with McGurk came a little more than a week after 14 rockets were fired at the Ain al-Assad air base, which hosts American troops in western Iraq, and three others which landed near the US embassy in Baghdad.

They were the latest in a spate of attacks targeting US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq. The attacks have been blamed on pro-Iranian armed groups within a state-sponsored paramilitary force.

Last month, the US launched air strikes against pro-Iranian militias along the Iraq-Syria border.

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Iraq says suspects arrested for murder of academic Hashemi
Baghdad (AFP) July 16, 2021
Iraq's premier Mustafa al-Kadhemi announced Friday that suspects have been arrested for the murder last year of academic Hisham al-Hashemi, one of dozens of unpunished hits the country has suffered in recent years. A specialist on Sunni extremism and a government adviser with a vast network of contacts among top decision makers, Hashemi was shot dead outside his Baghdad home in early July last year by gunmen on motorcycles. The academic had also become outspoken against powerful Shiite armed act ... read more