Ankara will not be influenced by US concerns when deciding whether to launch an incursion into northern Iraq to destroy bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) there, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Thursday in Bucharest.
Meanwhile, a senior US official in Ankara on the same day said that Washington is working with Turkish and Iraqi authorities to free eight Turkish soldiers held hostage by the PKK.
Responding to questions from reporters during a visit to the Romanian capital, Erdoğan said he wanted the United States to act with Turkey, a NATO ally, against the PKK, without elaborating whether this meant a joint military operation. “Right now, as a strategic ally, the US is in a position to support us. We have supported them in Afghanistan,” he said.
Erdoğan noted that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was welcome to voice hopes that Turkey would not overstep its border in its fight against the PKK.
But he added, “But any decision on the necessity of such an incursion belongs to us,” underlining that Ankara would have no hesitation in launching an attack against PKK bases in northern Iraq if the situation demanded it.
The prime minister drew a comparison to the US-led military intervention in Iraq. “Are people not asking themselves what the Americans are doing in Iraq, 10,000 kilometers from home?”
“I’m bothered [by the PKK]. What are the Americans bothered about in Iraq?” Erdoğan questioned. “Our security forces are determined to move as soon as the need arises. Our target is the terrorist organization, the PKK, not civilians or the entire territory of Iraq, he told a joint news conference with Romanian Premier Calin Popescu-Tariceanu.
Erdoğan also stressed that he thought that the Iraqis “won’t continue to shelter this organization which has found refuge in northern Iraq.”
Turkish nationalist opposition parties have accused Erdoğan and his government of being too soft on terrorism and of being swayed by US pressure not to send troops into Iraq. Anti-US sentiment has soared in Turkey over the past few years due to Washington’s refusal to crack down on the PKK, which uses northern Iraq as a launching pad for attacks on Turkish targets, despite the fact that the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the US capital and likewise a large majority of the international community.
In Washington, the US State Department said on Wednesday that Rice will visit Turkey next week in a new diplomatic push to reduce tensions between Turkey and Iraq over the PKK. Rice will be in Turkey on Nov. 2-3 for meetings with President Abdullah Gül and Erdoğan, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Rice told US legislators she had appealed for restraint from Turkey but stressed it was Iraq’s responsibility to prevent PKK terrorists from using northern Iraq as a springboard for attacks into Turkey. “We have said to the Turks that a major incursion into Iraq is only going to cause further instability. What we have encouraged is joint work [between Turkey and Iraq],” Rice said.
After her visit to Ankara for meetings with government leaders, Rice is set to travel to Istanbul for a ministerial conference on Iraq, attended by Iraq’s neighbors as well as major powers.
Turkey, which has NATO’s second biggest army, has amassed close to 100,000 troops along its mountainous border with Iraq, backed up by tanks, artillery, warplanes and helicopters, for a possible large-scale incursion.
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Wednesday, Pentagon chief Robert Gates has said he saw little sense in air strikes or major ground assaults by US, Turkish or other forces against the PKK in northern Iraq until more is known about their locations along the border.
“Without good intelligence, just sending large numbers of troops across the border [from Turkey] or dropping bombs doesn’t seem to make much sense to me,” Gates said, when asked to assess the prospects of the US military launching air strikes in support of Turkey’s efforts against the PKK. The defense secretary was questioned about whether his sense of the limitations on effective military action applied to the US as well as Turkish strikes. “For anybody,” he answered.
An Iraqi delegation led by Defense Minister Abdel Qader Mohammed Jassim arrived in Ankara on Thursday afternoon seeking to avert a Turkish military incursion. Turkish officials described the talks as “final chance” for a diplomatic solution. The eight-member delegation included Iraq’s intelligence chief and senior officials from the Iraqi interior and foreign ministries. It also included two representatives of the two major Iraqi Kurdish parties in northern Iraq. US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, said diplomats at the US Embassy also joined the Iraqi delegation but did not say which members of the embassy staff were dispatched to Ankara.
US says working to free hostage Turkish soldiers
In Ankara, a senior US official said on Thursday that the United States is “doing what it can” to obtain the release of eight Turkish troops captured Sunday by the PKK after an ambush in which 12 other soldiers were killed.
“My government is appalled by the recent attack. We are doing what we can, working with the Turkish government and the Iraqi government to make sure that the remaining hostages are freed,” Matthew Bryza, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said in a speech delivered at a top-level gathering of the 12-member Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) hosted in Ankara by term president Turkey.
“We’ve made a whole series of commitments on eliminating the PKK terrorist threat. We mean it. We’ll deliver on those promises. We are working on it ... with the Turkish government and the Iraqi government,” Bryza said. “We know we need to produce concrete results,” he added.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=125600
JPTF 2007/10/26
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário