Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari vowed on Tuesday to help
Turkey crack down on the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) taking
refuge in northern Iraq.
After talks with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan, Zebari
told reporters in a joint news conference that his government would
"actively help Turkey overcome this menace."
"We have a common position to fight terrorism wherever it is, we
will not allow any party or any group, including the PKK, to poison
our bilateral relations," Zebari said.
For his part, Babacan said that his country has historical
relations with Iraq, but "the situation in northern Iraq,
especially, the existence of the PKK" was unfortunate.
The Turkish top diplomat said the PKK have killed thousands of
people and "only during one month they killed 42 people."
Babacan also said that his country rejected the conditional
ceasefire offered by the PKK on Monday, underlining that Ankara did
not deal with a "terror" group.
"This issue of ceasefire is an issue between two countries and
two armies and not with a terror organization. The issue is of
terrorism," he said.
However, Babacan expressed his keenness that his country does
not want to "sacrifice its cultural and economic relations with
Iraq for the sake of a terror organization."
Babacan is also scheduled to meet the Iraqi Kurdish President
Jalal Talabani and prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The PKK said late
on Monday that its group would observe a unilateral ceasefire with
the Turkish troops on the Iraq-Turkey borders as of Monday
evening.
But Abdul Rahman al-jadarje, in charge of the PKK foreign
affairs, conditioned the ceasefire with the response from the
Turkish side, saying, "The ceasefire will be an open-ended one as
long as Turkish troops exercise restraint. If they attack us, then
we will defend ourselves."
Last week, the Turkish parliament approved a motion submitted by
the Turkish government for military incursion into neighboring Iraq
to crack down on elements of the PKK based there.
(Xinhua News Agency October 24, 2007)
