IRAQ/TURKEY: Iraq urges Turkey to seek peaceful solution to border crisis, sending vice president al-Hashemi to Ankara for urgent talks

Iraq urges Turkey to seek peaceful solution to border crisis, sending vice president al-Hashemi to Ankara for urgent talks. Turkish PM Erdogan says attack not imminent, but troops take up positions on both sides of border. Iraq urged Turkey on Tuesday (October 16) not to launch a major attack on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would strike the rebels when the timing and conditions were right. Faced with an escalation in separatist violence, Turkey's cabinet asked parliament on Monday (October 15) for permission to launch cross-border offensives. Parliament will debate the motion on Wednesday (October 17). It is expected to pass easily given the ruling AK Party's large majority and strong support for military action from the main opposition parties. On Tuesday, Turkish soldiers and armoured vehicles could be seen patrolling the mountain roads on both sides of the Iraqi border. Erdogan's centre-right government is under heavy public pressure to act after a series of attacks on Turkish troops by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which seeks an independent homeland in eastern Turkey. But Erdogan said he hoped an incursion into Iraq would not be necessary. "I sincerely wish that this motion will never be applied. The passage of this motion does not mean an immediate incursion will follow," she said. Washington has urged restraint on Turkey, strategically located between Europe and the Middle East. It relies on Turkey for logistical support for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Turkey, for its part, argues that the United States and Iraq have done too little to curb some 3,000 Kurdish rebels attacking eastern Turkey in pursuit of an independent state there. Dozens of soldiers and civilians have been killed in recent weeks by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels, piling pressure on the government to act. The Turkish military has long called for permission to hunt down PKK rebels in Iraq. Under heavy security, General Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces, inspected units stationed in the Turkish border province of Sirnak, which has been hardest hit by recent PKK attacks. Baghdad sent Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi to Ankara and called for urgent talks to head off military action that Washington fears could sow chaos in an area so far spared much of the carnage afflicting other parts of Iraq. He called for urgent talks to head off military action into northern Iraq. "I would like first of all to sit down with my brothers in the Turkish government and try to discuss the whole issue in an attempt to defuse the crisis at the earliest stage as possible," he said. Kurds living in the town of Cizre in southeast Turkey near the Iraq border said they didn't want war. "We do not want this approval to come out of parliament. We do not want war here. We do not want the border gate to be closed," said Cizre resident Ramazan Yildrim. The prospect of NATO's second largest army crossing into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq helped propel global oil prices to an all-time high of 85 U.S. dollars a barrel on Monday (October 15) while the lira currency fell more than 2 percent against the dollar.

ITN Source | October 17, 2007

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