Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's one-day trip to Baghdad was only the third such visit by a top Arab leader since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The U.S. has encouraged visits to Iraq by moderate Arab leaders to shore up support for Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, and as a counterweight to influence from Iraq's fellow Shiite neighbor, Iran. Siniora is a Sunni Muslim.

Iraq is also eager to improve ties with its Arab neighbors, as part of the government's growing confidence following improvements in security.

At a news conference alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Siniora offered support for Iraq and urged other Arab states to do the same.

"I do believe that Iraq's return to the Arabs and the Arabs' return to Iraq is a key goal and we all have to work to achieve it," he said.

Al-Maliki said the two countries would sign several agreements, including one outlining Iraqi oil exports to Lebanon, but provided no details. "There were talks about oil, cooperation in the oil industry, oil exports and supplying Lebanon with Iraqi oil according to an agreement," the Iraqi prime minister said.

Siniora, accompanied by four Cabinet ministers, was greeted at Baghdad International Airport by Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, the government said in a news release.

Siniora said the agreements would be signed in coming weeks. He said he found a "strong will from the Iraqi government to start cooperation in this field."

Iraq sits on the world's third-largest oil reserves with more than 115 billion barrels, but its oil industry has been battered by decades of war, U.N. sanctions and attacks by insurgents.

The war-torn country now produces about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day and the government hopes to produce 4.5 million barrels per day by 2013.

Siniora's visit also aimed to renew contact after more than a decade of chilly relations between Beirut and Baghdad. Ties soured in the mid-1990s after Iraqi agents killed a dissident in Beirut.

But Lebanon was still one of the only countries to maintain an embassy in Baghdad over the past five and a half years of war.

Lebanon's parliamentary majority leader, Saad Hariri, visited Iraq last month, followed by Jordan's King Abdullah II, the first Arab head of state to fly to Baghdad since 2003.

During his visit, Abdullah also urged Arab governments to extend a hand to the Shiite-led Iraqi government. Jordan receives discounted oil from Iraq.

It was not immediately clear whether Siniora would also visit the southern city of Najaf to meet Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Some figures in Lebanon's powerful Shiite militia Hezbollah have close personal ties with the religious hierarchy in Najaf, and some Lebanese Shiites trace their family origins back to what is now Iraq.

Also Wednesday, a prominent Sunni leader criticized his son's arrest during a raid in Baghdad. Adnan al-Dulaimi is one of the three top leaders of the largest Sunni Arab bloc in Iraq's parliament.

Al-Dulaimi said U.S. and Iraqi troops arrested his 44-year-old son, Muthanna, late Tuesday at the family's home in western Baghdad. Another son was also detained eight months ago.

Al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press the arrests are "targeting national reconciliation, the political process and democracy in the country." He said Muthanna is not involved in politics, and his arrest was meant to silence his father instead.

The U.S. military said no American troops were involved in the arrest. But the raid could upset the delicate political cooperation between Shiites and Sunnis in parliament.

Photo: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, right, welcomes Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, left, at the airport in Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

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