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Turkey hits back at Iraqi Kurdish leader
over independence, Kirkuk
28.2.2007 |
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February 28, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey, February 27, -- Turkish
leaders warned Iraqi Kurds Tuesday that their claims
to the ethnically volatile, oil-rich city of Kirkuk
in Iraq and talk of independence would fuel conflict
in the region, Anatolia news agency reported.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul accused the head of
the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq, Massoud
Barzani, of being "irrational" after he told Turkish
television that regional countries should accept
that Kurds, who live in Iraq, Iran, Syria and
Turkey, have a right to independence.
"Irrational leadership and ... dreaming in the
Middle East have always plunged the peoples into
trouble," Gul told journalists on a flight back home
from Afghanistan, Anatolia reported.
He slammed Barzani's remarks as "either deliberate
or an example of irresponsibility at a time when the
region, and particularly Iraq, is passing through a
critical period and when Turkey is following a
constructive policy."
Barzani told the NTV news channel Monday that Iraqi
Kurds were extending "a hand of friendship" to
Turkey and urged face-to-face talks to end
high-running bilateral tensions over Turkish Kurd
rebels who have found safe haven in his autonomous
region in neighbouring northern Iraq.
Ankara is worried that Kurdish control of Kirkuk's
oil reserves will boost what it sees as Kurdish
aspirations to break away from Baghdad.
Kurdish independence, it fears, could further fuel a
bloody Kurdish separatist insurgency in adjoining
southeast Turkey, which has already resulted in more
than 37,000 deaths.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also denounced
Barzani's comments.
"Kirkuk resembles a small Iraq and is not the
registered property of any ethnic group," Anatolia
quoted him as saying late Monday.
"Such an attitude is very wrong with regards to
Iraq's future. I believe such an attitude will
overshadow peace, love and brotherhood in Iraq," he
said.
Both Erdogan and Gul have recently asserted that
Ankara was open to talks with Iraqi Kurds to mend
fences and discuss ways of curbing the rebels based
in northern Iraq, contrary to earlier Turkish
threats of a cross-border military operation into
the region.
Ankara has grown increasingly impatient with US and
Iraqi reluctance to move against the militants of
the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a
terrorist group by both Ankara and Washington, among
others.
Army chief General Yasar Buyukanit has accused Iraqi
Kurds of "fully" supporting the PKK and providing it
with explosives for bomb attacks in Turkey.
In Monday's interview, Barzani denied that Iraqi
Kurds supported the group.
AFP
**
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be
annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region
in Iraq's north.
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