Agence France-Presse,
Turkey said Thursday it would pursue diplomacy to defuse a crisis over Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as Baghdad made fresh appeals to dissuade its neighbour from military action.
The Turkish parliament Wednesday approved a motion authorizing military strikes for a one-year period against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which uses bases in northern Iraq for attacks on targets across the border in Turkey.
Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said Ankara wants to give diplomacy a chance, but insisted that it is determined to fight “terrorism” — a reference to the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community.
An Istanbul meeting of the foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbours set for November 2 will be “an occasion to discuss all problems in Iraq, including our problem with terrorism,” Babacan said during a visit to Cairo.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected at the Istanbul meeting.
In Ankara, Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul said he would meet his US counterpart Robert Gates on Sunday to discuss the tensions. The meeting will take place in the sidelines of an international gathering in Kiev, Anatolia news agency quoted Gonul as saying.
The Kurdish administration of northern Iraq, accused by Ankara of tolerating and even aiding the PKK, called for direct negotiations with Turkey as thousands of Iraqi Kurds took to the streets to protest against the Turkish threat.
The autonomous Kurdish regional government said it “welcomes direct dialogue with Ankara on all issues of common interest or concern, including the PKK.”
“An incursion would be detrimental to all Iraq, to Turkey and the Middle East,” it said.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, speaking in Washington, pressed Turkey to avoid military action.
“It is a Turkish decision,” he said, but Baghdad hopes Ankara will choose “not to use the military solution and refrain from crossing Iraqi borders.”
Faced with mounting PKK attacks on Turkish targets, Ankara says its patience has run out with what it terms US and Iraqi inaction over the rebels.
Turkish criticism of the United States increased after it recently emerged that US weapons given to Iraq had ended up in PKK hands.
Wary of fresh turmoil in Iraq, Washington has urged Turkish not to carry out any incursion.
But it has lost its leverage with Ankara because of a pending US Congressional vote on a resolution labelling the World War I Ottoman massacres of Armenians as genocide.
Gonul said the PKK bases in Iraq and the Congressional resolution will both be on the agenda of his talks with Gates on Sunday.
Ankara has signalled it could bar the United States from using the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, a key facility for transporting US cargo to Iraq and Afghanistan, if the genocide bill is adopted.
Iraqi leaders on Wednesday asked Turkey for time to act against the PKK, pointing at an accord the two countries signed last month to tackle the rebels.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the telephone Wednesday that Baghdad “is absolutely determined” to purge the PKK from northern Iraq.
It remains to be seen whether Maliki's embattled government, which has virtually no authority over the Kurdish-administered north, can cajole the Iraqi Kurds into action against fellow Kurds.
The PKK has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
