IRAQ: Turkey hunts PKK rebels after Iraqi talks fail

Turkish military planes scoured the Iraqi border for Kurdish rebel camps on Saturday(October 27), army sources said, after diplomatic talks in Ankara to avert a major cross-border operation into northern Iraq failed. "Turkey is shelling us daily. Why? What is the reason? Are there any PKK? There are no members of PKK here . They want an excuse to evict us from our lands and houses in Kurdistan" said Shamoun, a Christian resident of a, Iraqi village shelled by Turkey. Turkish-Iraqi talks collapsed late on Friday(October 26) after Ankara rejected a series of proposals by Iraqi Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim to tackle Kurdish guerrillas based in northern Iraq as insufficient. The delegation left on Saturday. Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by fighter jets, helicopter gunships, tanks, and mortars, on the frontier before a possible offensive against about 3,000 rebels using Iraq as a base from which to carry out deadly attacks in Turkey. The United States, which was also represented at the talks, opposes a major incursion, fearing it could destabilise Iraq's relatively peaceful north and potentially the wider region. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms against Turkey in 1984, aiming to create an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict. In recent years the PKK has pushed for greater cultural and political rights. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan took a swipe at western countries on Saturday for not helping Turkey fight the PKK, criticising what he called an approach of "your terrorist is good, my terrorist is bad". Erdogan meanwhile played down comments by Turkey's top general that the army was waiting for him to meet U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington on Nov. 5 before launching a major incursion. U.S.-Turkish ties have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks. General Yasar Buyukanit was quoted by Turkish media on Friday as saying the meeting was very important and the NATO's second largest army would hold off until Erdogan returned. Senior Turkish diplomats say Erdogan has given Washington and Baghdad a limited time to show concrete results or steps to be taken against the PKK. The meeting in Washington will be the last chance, they told Reuters. The military has recently carried out as many as 24 limited operations into northern Iraq against the PKK but no major land incursion, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said on Friday. Turkish helicopter gunships and F-16 jets have attacked PKK positions inside Iraq in recent days. Analysts question whether a major military assault into northern Iraq would be successful, as past ones have failed to dislodge the PKK, whose members are also in Turkey. Ankara had asked Iraq to hand over PKK members, but the central government has little control over semi-autonomous northern Iraq, run by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG, run by Masoud Barzani, says it has no control over the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation in the United States, Turkey and the European Union. Barzani has vowed to fight any Turkish incursion.

ITN Source | October 28, 2007

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