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ANKARA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Turkey urged the
United States and Iraq on Wednesday to shut down an
office in the Kurdistan-northern
Iraqi city of Kirkuk it says is linked to the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a banned Turkish
Kurdish guerrilla group.
Turkish newspapers have in recent days carried
photographs of the building, adorned with a PKK
flag, in oil-rich Kirkuk. Some papers say the PKK
has offices in other Iraqi cities too.
"We see these offices as an extension of the PKK
terrorist organisation or as a front for the PKK,"
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan told a
weekly news briefing.
"In this context, we make the strongest
representations to the U.S. and Iraqi authorities
(to take swift action)."
He said Turkey would raise the matter at a planned
meeting of officials from the three countries in
Washington on Friday.
Turkey has long been urging the United States, its
NATO ally, to crack down on an estimated 3,000 PKK
fighters holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Washington, like Ankara, views the PKK as a
terrorist organisation, but its forces are busy
tackling armed opponents of its occupation in
central Iraq and is loathe to launch actions in the
relatively peaceful, Kurdish-dominated north.
PKK-linked violence inside Turkey has increased
since the group called off a unilateral five-year
ceasefire last summer.
Turkey blames the PKK for the deaths of more than
30,000 people since the rebels began their armed
campaign for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in southeast
Turkey in 1984.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and senior Turkish
generals have said Ankara reserves the right to send
troops across the border into Iraq to crush the PKK
if U.S. forces do not act.
Reuters
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