Iraq ‘to hunt down PKK fighters’
Nuri al-Maliki vows to “chase and arrest” Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq.
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“I think it is pretty difficult to say troops shouldn’t [invade] when the Turkish soldiers are being killed, and their villages attacked” Celtic, Karlstad, Sweden |
“No-one should be under any illusions that Iraq is very serious in co-operating actively and in lending its active support to the Turkish government,” he said.
The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq closed the offices of a political party that is believed to sympathise with the PKK, a Kurdish official said on Saturday.
Fouad Hussain, head of the office of Masoud Barzani, Kurdish president, said the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party had no licence to operate.
Turkish pressure
Ankara has been increasing pressure on the United States to help curb the attacks by the Kurdish fighters from northern Iraq.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has urged Ankara to show restraint.
PKK fighters are known to have several |
She has expressed fears that an incursion by Turkey into Iraq would destabilise the region and complicate the US mission there.
Turkey is growing increasingly impatient at what it sees as US ‘foot-dragging’ over the PKK issue.
Rice has promised more action from the US, but provided little detail on how far Washington was prepared to go except to offer improved intelligence-sharing on the PKK.
Iraq plan
Rice, Zebari, and Ali Babacan, the Turkish foreign minister, held talks on the sidelines of the conference to discuss a strategy to fight the PKK, which Rice has labelled a “common enemy”.
Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said: “We are ready to take whatever steps to secure the border but it should come through a joint agreement between us and Turkey and within our capacity.”
The central government in Baghdad has little control over northern Iraq, an area considered semi-autonomous and run by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which Turkey refuses to talk to.