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Iraq Kurds warn Turkey against incursion
into Kurdistan region
11.10.2007
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October
11, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', --
The autonomous Kurdistan region of 'northern Iraq'
warned Turkey on Thursday against carrying through
with its threat to mount an armed cross-border
incursion against Kurdish rebels.
"Recourse to military action is not going to help
resolve the question of security on our borders,"
the regional government's spokesman Jamal Abdullah
said.
"There must be other ways to settle this problem
because it's our problem too."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is
expected to submit a bill to parliament on Monday
seeking authorisation for the army to launch an
incursion into northern Iraq to flush out suspected
bases of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
"Turkish threats are not new for this region," said
Saman Shali, head of the Kurdish National Congress
of North America, an organisation that represents
Kurds in the United States.
"We believe that the Turkish threats are not aiming
at PKK only, but it has ambitions in the south of
Kurdistan, that is to say northern Iraq," Shali told
AFP during a visit to Iraq's Kurdistan in the north.
Ankara charges that the PKK has used bases in
northern Iraq to launch a renewed offensive inside
Turkey that saw 15 soldiers killed at the weekend.
It accuses the Iraqi Kurds of tolerating or even
supporting the PKK rebels, something that the
regional government denies.
"We reiterate our clear official position that we do
not allow groups hostile to any of our neighbours to
use Kurdistan to launch operations," Abdullah said.
Washington on Wednesday again warned Ankara against
unilateral action in Kurdistan region 'northern
Iraq'.
The United States is concerned that a Turkish
incursion will destabilise a relatively peaceful
region of conflict-torn Iraq and fuel tensions
between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds, who are staunch
US allies.
Iraq's Ambassador to Ankara underlined that any
Turkish military action in northern Iraq would be
illegal.
"There is no legal base for the military campaign
that Turkey would like to launch against Iraq,"
Sabah Omran told a gathering in Ankara.
"If Turkey crossed the borders with Iraq it would be
violating the unity and sovereignty of Iraq," he
added.
Turkey and Iraq signed an accord last month to
combat the PKK but failed to agree on a clause
allowing Turkish troops to engage in "hot pursuit"
against rebels fleeing into Iraqi territory, as they
did regularly in the 1990s.
Abdullah Salih, an Iraqi MP from the Kurdish
alliance, acknowledged that, "Turkish threats are
looking serious this time."
"These Turkish threats have nothing to do with the
PKK but it is related to the development that may
happen in the region in the future," he added.
AFP
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