MOSCOW, July 24. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with visiting Iraqi Vice President Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday in St. Petersburg, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Monday.

"Yes," he said when asked to information about the meeting.

The Iraqi vice president is on a working visit to Russia. On Monday, he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and speaker of the Federation Council upper parliament house Valentina Matviyenko.

He said that during his stay in Moscow he raised the issue of a referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan "in the context of the vision of the country’s future." We support the interests of the Kurdish people but what we are observing today does not serve the interests of the Kurdish people properly, so we want a serious dialogue between Baghdad and Kurdistan in order to reach settlement. But so far, we see that the situation is developing in the opposite direction, not in Iraq’s interests," he said.

He stressed the importance of "establishing a political regime in Iraq that would rely on the principle of political majority in order to ensure sustainable future for the Iraqi people, regardless of their ethnic or religious identity.".