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April 13, 2007
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N Iraq Kurdish Government Ready For Talks With Turkey On Rebel Group
Dow Jones Newswires - By Spencer Swartz
ERBIL, Iraq - The Kurdish government in northern Iraq is prepared to have formal talks with Turkey to diminish the possibility of Turkey launching fresh incursions in the region against an armed rebel group it has long battled, the top foreign affairs official of the Kurdish government said Friday.
Falah Mustafa Bakir, director of foreign relations for the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, also said newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker visited the Kurdish capital here Thursday night to emphasize the U.S. doesn't want the festering issue over the armed Kurdish rebel group to destabilize the region.
The U.S. has warned against a Turkish military foray into the region because it fears it could lead to a wider conflict in a region whose relative peace and growing prosperity has been the only real success story since the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Crocker came to Erbil for discussions with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani and other top Kurdish officials, including Bakir, after a Turkish general earlier Thursday asked the government for permission to attack the rebel group known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, after a series of recent clashes that left several Turkish soldiers dead.
Bakir said he believed Kurdish Prime Minister Necirvan Barzani, nephew of the president, was ready for discussions with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to ease tensions over the matter. Crocker didn't make any formal proposals, he said.
"I believe the prime minister is ready for formal talks on this. (Barzani and Gul) were supposed to meet two months and that meeting was canceled at the last minute. This idea is something that was talked about with Ambassador Crocker," Bakir said in an interview here in the Kurdish capital.
Bakir is effectively the Kurdish government's foreign minister but maintains a less formal title because the Kurdish region doesn't have independence from Iraq. The Kurdish government has considerable self-governing latitude over its affairs under Iraq's federalist constitution.
The Kurdish government has no ties with the PKK but Turkey has long complained that the KRG, the U.S. and Iraqi governments haven't done enough to crack down on the group and seal the border between Iraq and Turkey.
The PKK, branded a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union, has waged a decades' long campaign for independence in southeast Turkey that has resulted in the deaths of 30,000 Turkish civilians.
Bakir said Turkey needed to pursue a "political solution rather than a military one." This meant, Bakir said, granting Kurds in Turkey more rights. A political solution also required the PKK abiding by a month's old ceasefire agreement, he said. Turkey is the Kurdish government's top trade partner.
Iraq has warned Turkey against incursions into northern Iraq and promised to prevent cross-border PKK attacks.
Bakir also called on the Iraqi to become more active on the PKK issue in mediation efforts. "The federal government of Iraq also has a role to play in this."
After the capture of the PKK's leader in 1999, the insurgents largely withdrew from Turkey to neighboring Iran and Syria but mostly to northern Iraq, where Turkey fears it has regrouped.
spencer.swartz@ dowjones.com
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