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Iraqi Kurds blame Turkish military for
collapse of talks
30.10.2007 |
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October
30, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', --
Iraqi Kurds on Tuesday blamed the Turkish military
for the failure of talks between Baghdad and Ankara
over Turkey's Kurdish PKK rebels and urged fresh
dialogue to end their uprising.
At a high-level meeting in Ankara on October 19, a
delegation from Baghdad offered proposals to avert a
threatened Turkish military incursion into Kurdistan
'northern Iraq' to attack the camps of the rebel
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
But Ankara said it was not satisfied by the
proposals from the visiting delegation, which had
two members from Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq'
Kurdish parties.
Kamel Shaker, a top Iraqi Kurdish leader, said the
talks collapsed because of a tough Turkish military
stance.
"The failure of the meeting in Ankara was due to the
intransigent attitude of the Turkish military which
believes that if it meets with representatives of
Kurdistan, they would lose face," he said.
Shaker, a hardline communist leader, said the
Turkish military refused to acknowledge the two
Kurdish members of the Baghdad delegation, Sifin
Dezaie and Imad Ahmed, during the talks.
"The military is adamant in its view," he told AFP
at his office in Erbil, the capital of the
autonomous Kurdish government of northern Iraq.
"They do not want to meet with the representatives
of Kurdistan, or have a dialogue with president
Massud Barzani. They do not want Kurdistan."
Shaker said the other stumbling block was Ankara's
refusal to accept the deployment of peshmergas, or
Kurdish fighters, along the Iraqi Kurdistan-Turkey
border where according to reports, some 100,000
Turkish troops have been deployed.
Azad Aslam, a political analyst with the English
weekly Globe Kurdish in Erbil said "the Turks also
refused the idea of controlling the border jointly
by the American and Iraqi forces."
"The Turkish demands are to close the bases of the
PKK in Kurdistan, to arrest and surrender its
leaders... This derailed the negotiation as why
would Iraqis ask the Kurds in Kurdistan to attack
other Kurds?"
Aslam's view was echoed by Barzani in an interview
published on Tuesday in Turkey's Milliyet newspaper.
"You (Ankara) do not speak to me, then you ask me to
do things against the PKK. How can this be?" he
said. "I am a friend of Turkey but I am not taking
orders from Turkey or anyone else."
Aslam too blamed the Turkish military for the
failure of talks.
"The military does not want a political dialogue. On
the contrary they want more tension to assert their
power."
Barzani said Iraqi Kurds were worried that Turkey
was using the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group
by Ankara and much of the international community,
as a pretext to undermine Kurdish autonomy in
northern Iraq.
Ankara has long suspected the Iraqi Kurds of designs
to break away from Baghdad, a prospect that could
embolden the PKK campaign in southeast Turkey, which
has already claimed more than 37,000 lives since
1984.
"Why is Turkey's hostility towards Iraqi Kurdistan?
Is it because we are the real problem in Ankara's
eyes and not the PKK?" Barzani asked.
Shaker called for more diplomatic dialogue,
especially ahead of an international meeting in
Istanbul early next month on the turmoil in Iraq.
But he said one such opportunity had been lost as
Turkey cancelled the visit of a delegation from
northern Iraq to meet officials of the AKP (Justice
and Development Party), Turkey's ruling party.
He also said Turkish leaders should ask themselves
why the PKK was born in the first place. "Even if
they eliminated the PKK, it would be born again in
some other form."
The Iraqi Kurdish administration wants to maintains
a policy of dialogue and its prime minister
Nechirvan Barzani on Monday reiterated that his
government would not allow any attacks against
Turkey from his region.
"We consider attacks against Turkey as illegal," he
said.
AFP
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