Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in the Kurdish capital of Irbil on Sunday to hold a Cabinet meeting as part of an initiative started last year to hold meetings outside Baghdad to better understand the needs of the provinces.\nAl-Maliki and government ministers arrived by military plane to the regional capital where they were received on a red carpet by the region s president Massoud Barzani.\nThe meeting the first in the Kurdish capital since 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein carries particular significance because it is seen as a way to melt the ice between Baghdad and Irbil. \nThe two sides have for years been locked in a bitter dispute over oil and land rights and last year engaged in a military standoff along their disputed internal border.\nAl-Maliki s visit comes as a suicide car bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into an Iraqi army checkpoint in a Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad on Sunday morning killing at least seven people and wounding 18 others officials said.\nThose killed Sunday included five soldiers and two civilian bystanders according to police.\nShiites are one of the favoured targets for hardline Sunni insurgents who consider them infidels. \nThe region is going through a new tempest a reckless and sectarian tempest al-Maliki said during the cabinet meeting in Irbil.\nOne of its most dangerous aspects is the return of the emergence of extremist organisations such as al-Qaida and the Nasra Front and other advocates of radicalism and sectarianism...a matter that brings back the ghost of fear of a return of violence not only in Iraq but in the whole region he said.\nViolence has spiked in Iraq in recent weeks raising fears of a return to widespread sectarian bloodshed.