Iraqi leading political parties on Saturday decided to meet in two weeks to give final decision about the extension of the U.S. troops' presence in the country beyond the end of 2011 deadline, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said.

Talabani's remarks came after a meeting at his residence in Baghdad attended by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, top Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders.

"The issue of the U.S. troops' presence has been thoroughly discussed and our brothers (politicians) decided to tackle the issue with their friends, allies and parties to come after two weeks with a decisive result," Talabani told reporters at a press conference after the meeting.

Baghdad and Washington are in debate whether the U.S. troops need to extend the presence of its troops in Iraq beyond the 2011 deadline.

In mid 2010, U.S. troops in Iraq had been reduced to below 50, 000 soldiers. Washington said that the remaining U.S. troops in Iraq are conducting support and training missions.

U.S. military forces are to pull out completely from Iraq by the end of 2011, according to the security pact named Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which was signed late in 2008 between Baghdad and Washington.

Talabani said that the meeting was successful and was attended by all the political leaders who also have discussed the issue of what is known as Arbil agreement which was brokered in November 2010 in the Kurdish region in northern the country and in which Iraqi political rivals reached to the power-sharing deal that ended eight months of the country's political deadlock after Iraq' s March 7 parliamentary elections.

The Iraqi political leaders also agreed to form a committee which all the political parties would be represented in to prepare suggestions that could be agreed upon in the next meeting which was decided to be held after two weeks, Talabani added.

Talabani's meeting came to defuse tensions flared recently between Maliki and Ayad Allawi, head of the Sunni-backed Iraqia bloc, after Maliki failed to agree on the law of the yet-to-be- created National Council for Strategic Policies, which is a body supposed to be headed by Allawi and tasked to oversee major issues including security ones.

The body was agreed upon by the Iraqi rival political blocs within the power-sharing deal that was brokered by the Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani in Arbil.

Allawi was in fierce struggle to take the post of the prime minister after his Iraqia bloc narrowly won most seats in the parliamentary polls.

Xinhua