[NYTr] Turkish Forces Barrage Border Area in Northern Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via Intl Herald Tribune - Oct 15, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/15/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Turkey.php

Turkish forces barrage border area in northern Iraq as tensions rise

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Monday he was prepared to
hold urgent talks with the Turkish government to defuse the crisis over
a possible military incursion into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish
guerrillas.

Al-Maliki also said he was planning an emergency meeting Tuesday with
close aides to review the situation on the Iraqi-Turkish border, where
hillsides near villages were struck by rockets and artillery over the
weekend.

But Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab and often a harsh
critic of the Shiite al-Maliki, may be moving get a role in the crisis
talks ahead of the prime minister.

Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency said al-Hashemi was expected in
Ankara Tuesday for what a senior associate of the vice president said
was an attempt to resolve the crisis.

Lawmaker Salim Abdullah of al-Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party, said the
vice president discussed his Ankara trip on the telephone Monday with
Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern
Iraq. He said he was expected to be in Ankara for a day or two.

"He is authorized by Massoud Barzani to talk to Turkish leaders to find
out exactly what their demands are and to see to what extent they can
be met by the Iraqi government," Abdullah told The Associated Press
from Amman, in neighboring Jordan. Al-Hashemi also is in Amman.

Al-Maliki, in a statement issued by his office, sounded equally
determined.

"We are prepared to conduct urgent talks with the top officials of the
Turkish government to discuss and solve all outstanding problems and
give guarantees that will govern relations between the two neighboring
nations," said the statement.

"We are fully confident that our friends in the Turkish government are
committed, just as it is our wish, to bolstering and developing our
bilateral relations on the basis of mutual respect, nonintervention in
the other's internal affairs and not allowing the harmful use of each
other's territory," the statement said.

Al-Maliki did not say whether he wanted to travel to Ankara to talk
with Turkish leaders or invite them to Baghdad, but his comments
appeared to reflect growing concern in Iraq over the crisis on the
border with NATO-member and close U.S. ally Turkey.

Much of Iraq is mired in violence perpetuated by insurgents and
al-Qaida militants and an outbreak of hostilities in the country's
Kurdish north, where an autonomous region was set up 16 years ago,
would only deepen the country's security woes, plunging the relatively
peaceful area into turmoil and triggering another wave of displaced
people.

Already, some Iraqi Kurdish officials are criticizing the central
government for not taking action to deter a possible Turkish incursion,
a charge that could have bolster secessionist sentiments among the
Kurds.

An official spokesman in Ankara said he hoped parliament would vote
this week on a government motion seeking approval for a military
operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Passage of the
motion is likely, Cemil Cicek, the spokesman, indicated that the
government would still prefer a solution that did not involve a
cross-border offensive.

He said any military operation would target the rebel Kurdistan
Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK. The statement
appeared to be aimed at reassuring Iraq's central government as well as
Iraqi Kurds, who run their own administration in northern Iraq.

The separatist PKK rebels have been fighting the Turkish government
since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

U.S. officials have urged Turkey not to send troops and appealed for a
diplomatic solution with Iraq. The Kurdish self-rule region in northern
Iraq is one of the country's few relatively stable areas and the Kurds
also are longtime U.S. allies.

Some residents in northern Iraq, meanwhile, called for U.S.
intervention after the weekend's shelling in which, according to Col.
Hussein Rashid of the Iraqi army's border guard forces, Turkish troops
fired more than 250 artillery shells and at least 10 missiles.

He said the late Saturday shelling caused no casualties or damages as
it hit only abandoned areas in the mountains.

AP Television News footage shot from the village of Inshki, 30
kilometers (20 miles) from the Turkish border, showed a hillside dotted
with balls of fire, terrifying residents below.

"We condemn the Turkish bombardment of Kurdish areas," resident Salih
Kaka Ameen told APTN in Irbil, a Kurdish city 350 kilometers (217
miles) north of Baghdad.

"We demand that American intervene to put an end to this crisis."

The Turkish military said Saturday its troops have heavily responded to
armed attacks from northern Iraq and will continue to do so but did not
give details.

During the 1990s, Turkish troops penetrated Iraqi territory on numerous
occasions, sometimes with as many as 50,000 troops. The Turkish forces
withdrew, leaving behind about 2,000 soldiers who remain to monitor
rebel activities.

Ankara rotates the troops there, but it has not sent reinforcements. A
tank battalion has been stationed at a former airport at the border
town of Bamerni.