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| Iraq |
| Iraq to help Turkey deal with 'Kurdish terrorism' |
| 2007-10-23 |
| Baghdad - Iraq agreed Tuesday to help Turkey deal with terrorism by Kurdish rebels, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after talks with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan in Baghdad. 'We discussed all issues in fully open talks and reaffirmed the stance that we will jointly fight terrorism and not make our territories into launching pads for armed groups, including the Kurdistan Workers' Party, to poison relations between our countries,' Zebari said. He was speaking to journalists after his talks with Babacan. Turkey had threatened to send troops over the border into Iraq to halt cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels from the separatist group - Kurdistan's Workers's party (PKK). The talks are part of of a diplomatic effort to forestall threatened Turkish raids in northern Iraq on Kurdish insurgents. Zebari said the crisis with Ankara would be resolved through dialogue and good neighbourly relations. He added that Iraq has not received any lists of names of Iraqi officials wanted by Turkey but only a list of wanted PKK leaders. As noted below, Maliki government has very little say about what happens in Kurdistan. The Turkish minister reaffirmed Turkey's willingness to use diplomacy but said it reserved the right to use other means as well. 'There are several ways of fighting terrorism and we know which decision to make at the right time,' Babacan said. Babacan is expected to meet Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other senior officials later Tuesday to discuss ways of ending military activities by the Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Talabani and Zebari are Kurds, but they represent Iraq's central government. Turkey refuses to hold talks with the regional Iraqi Kurdish authority and accuses its leaders, especially the province's president, Masud Barzani, of hindering a potential joint Turkish- Iraqi operation against Kurdish insurgents. PKK rebels are hiding mainly in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq controlled by Iraq's Kurdish government. The group has declared its willingness to agree to a ceasefire, according to a statement posted on a Kurdish website on Monday night. Talabani confirmed the statement and told journalists Monday that the PKK would end fighting with Turkey. But Turkey has in the past viewed similar PKK statements with skepticism. In another development, a spokesman for the defence forces of Iraq's Kurdish Autonomous Region, said they were independent of the country's defence ministry and only took orders from the provincial leader. 'The defence forces of the province of Kurdistan take orders only from the general command of the defence forces of the province,' the independent news agency Voices of Iraq quoted the spokesman for the troops' general command, Jabar Yawer, as saying Monday evening. Baghdad's writ is not enforceable in Irbil and the Turks won't deal with the province's government. The command of the Kurdish troops (Peshmerga) consists of eight members led by the provincial president Barzani, Yawer said. Peshmerga and the Iraqi Ministry of Defence are two independent bodies, which means that coordination should take place between the forces' general commander and the general commander of the Iraqi armed troops, he added. Such 'coordination' would be darn close to a defacto admission of Kurdish independence, something neither Baghdad nor Ankara are willing to grant. Yawer's statement is the first Kurdish response to a demand by the Iraqi Minister of Defence Abdel-Qadir Muhammad Jasim that multinational forces be responsible for upholding security. Jasim was quoted as telling a closed parliamentary sitting on Monday that Kurdish Peshmerga should be put under the leadership of the general commander of the Iraqi armed forces temporarily as deploying army units from various provinces to northern Iraq would be difficult without the consent of the US-led multinational troops. I read that as a plea for US political intervention, asking Washington to use its influence to bring the Kurds to heel. |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #1 Thats what it amounts to. Again, we need to move a battalion up there, even if its just symbolic, so secure the frontier areas, first agains tthe PKK (ahd thus the Turks), and second agasint any Syrian or Iranian influence. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-10-23 18:05 |