BAQUBA, Iraq, June 25 (AFP) - 18h09 - The governor of a Kurdish province in northern Iraq offered Saturday to send Kurdish militiamen to help restore security in neighbouring areas ravaged by the persistent Sunni Arab insurgency.We are ready to send peshmerga members to Diyala, Salaheddin and Kirkuk provinces if we are asked to help out with the security situation, said Dana Ahmed Majid, governor of Sulaymaniyah province.

"We respect provincial boundaries but we are offering our help to bring out peace and security."

Majid spoke at a governors' meeting in Baquba, capital of Diyala province northeast of the capital.

A ban on militias imposed under the US-led occupation authority has never applied to the three northern provinces which Kurdish rebels ruled in defiance of Saddam Hussein's regime before the 2003 invasion.

The peshmerga continue to oversee security there and Kurdish members of Iraq's governing coalition, including President Jalal Talabani, have resisted all calls for them to disarmed, insisting they be retained as an independent unit within the Iraqi armed forces.

Those forces already have a disproportionate number of Kurdish and Shiite recruits, US commanders have acknowledged.