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| Turkey launches raids in Iraq |
| October 24 2007 at 09:27PM |
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By Thomas Grove "Further 'hot pursuit' raids into northern Iraq can be expected, though none have taken place so far today (Wednesday)," a military official told Reuters. The sorties killed 34 PKK rebels and all the Turkish troops involved in the operations were now back in Turkey, he said. But Abdul Rahman Jaderji, a PKK spokesman in northern Iraq, told Reuters there had been no direct fighting between the two sides since clashes on Sunday in which 12 Turkish soldiers died. He said Turkish troops had been shelling areas of northern Iraq, but little new shelling had been reported on Wednesday. Baghdad has pledged to act against the rebels. A Turkish official on Wednesday quoted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying Iraq might hand over PKK militants to Turkey, but Talabani denied it. "We have said many times that the PKK leadership does not exist in Kurdish cities but are living with thousands of their fighters in the Qandil mountains, so it is not possible for us to arrest and hand them over to Turkey," he said in a statement. The lira currency firmed to 1.2100 against the dollar on the back of Talabani's reported comments. The Turkish official described as a "final chance" for diplomacy a planned visit by an Iraqi delegation to Ankara on Thursday. At Turkey's request, the team will be headed by Iraqi Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim. It will also include Iraqi National Security Minister Shirwan al Waeli. "Restraint" Washington and Baghdad fear a major Turkish incursion into northern Iraq could destabilise the whole region. But Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government is under heavy public pressure to take tough action, especially since Sunday's deaths. "If I look at the Turkish goverment as it has acted up till now I think the Turkish government is showing restraint - remarkable restraint under present circumstances," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters at a meeting of the alliance's defence ministers. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday she had told Erdogan on Sunday that she took the situation "extremely seriously". "Iraq should not be a place where terrorism can hurt Turkey," she said. "We have a list of things that we believe, if they are undertaken, will help to deal with this situation," she added, citing Iraq's pledge to close PKK offices there. Ankara is sceptical about Baghdad's ability to crack down on the PKK in northern Iraq, a mainly Kurdish region where central government has little clout. The publication of photographs said to show eight Turkish soldiers captured by the PKK has added to pressure on Ankara to act. US troops are largely absent from northern Iraq. The PKK's Jaderji said the eight soldiers were in good health but no decision had been made on whether to release them. "We are reinforcing our troops near the border at Silopi and Uludere with men drawn from other parts of the country," a military source told Reuters in southeast Turkey on Wednesday. Troops on the border Turkey, which has NATO's second biggest army, has deployed as many as 100 000 troops, backed by tanks, heavy artillery, F-16 fighter jets and helicopter gunships, along the mountainous border in preparation for a possible large-scale strike. Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30 000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. Turkey's National Security Council, comprising political leaders and army top brass, met on Wednesday in Ankara to mull possible economic measures against the Kurdish administration of northern Iraq over its continued failure to tackle the rebels. "The prime minister has indicated this meeting could produce economic sanctions, for example, cutting off electricity to northern Iraq or the closure or slowing down of traffic at the Habur border gate," said Suat Kiniklioglu, a lawmaker with the ruling AK Party. Northern Iraq depends heavily on Turkey for power, water and many food supplies. Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani has infuriated Turkey by refusing to act against the PKK. He has said his peshmerga fighters will resist any Turkish incursion. The parliament of Iraq's largely autonomous region of Kurdistan met in special session on Wednesday and appealed to the UN, United States and Britain to stop Turkey invading. It also called on the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, Turkey and the European Union, to respect Iraqi sovereignty. Turkish Foreign Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen said Ankara was capable of excluding the north and maintaining trade relations with the rest of Iraq if the crisis over the PKK escalated. Additional reporting by Gareth Jones, Selcuk Gokoluk, Evren Mesci and Hatice Aydogdu in Ankara, Ferit Demir in Tunceli and Sherko Raouf in Kirkuk, and Mark John in Noordwijk
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