SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Authorities in northern Kurdistan warned rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) against waging war against Turkey or Iran from Iraqi territory. “They (PKK) are in our land. We want them to respect the law and not use our territory to stage attacks” against Iran or Turkey, said Imad Ahmed, deputy prime minister of northern Kurdistan’s Sulaimaniyah province.“We want them to leave our country but in peace, not in war. If they want to stay they have to use politics not weapons.”
Ahmed, a member of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, said the region hoped to have good relations with neighbouring Turkey and Iran. “We do not want any problems with Iran or Turkey and I condem any attacks on the two from Iraqi territory,” Ahmed told AFP in an interview.
On Wednesday the PKK, an armed separatist group which is fighting for an independent Kurdish homeland in the region, warned Ankara of a “mass war” if its forces entered Iraqi territory to fight PKK guerillas. “We do not want war, but we will launch a mass war against Turkey if its forces enter Iraqi territory,” PKK executive body chief Murad Karialan said.
The Turkish army reserves the right to venture into Iraq to pursue PKK rebels based there, but has denied reports that such operations are already under way.
Turkey has amassed thousands of troops along the border with Iraq for what officials describe as a large-scale effort to prevent increasing infiltrations by PKK rebels based in mountainous hideouts in northern Iraq.
Ankara has long urged Washington and Baghdad to root out the PKK from northern Iraq, but it has been told that violence in other parts of the conflict-torn country is their priority. The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has been fighting Ankara since 1984 when it took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey.