RICE PROMISES ANKARA "EFFECTIVE" ACTION ON PKK
Reuters
Nov 2 2007
SHANNON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday
promised "effective" action against Kurdish rebels who have launched
attacks on Turkey from northern Iraq, but she strongly urged Ankara
itself to observe restraint.
Speaking en route for Turkey, Rice called the Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK) a "common enemy" but said its NATO ally should not undertake
any action that could destabilize the situation in northern Iraq.
She also indicated Washington might follow Turkey’s lead and impose
sanctions targeting the PKK separatists.
"We have certainly been concerned that anything that would destabilize
the north of Iraq is not going to be in Turkey’s interests, it is not
going to be in our interests and it is not going to be in the Iraqis’
interests. That’s been the reason for urging restraint," Rice told
reporters before a refueling stop in Ireland.
"But we understand the need to do something effective against this
PKK threat," she said, adding: "The PKK is an enemy of the United
States just like it is an enemy of the Turks."
Turkey has sent 100,000 troops to the border for a possible push into
northern Iraq against PKK militants. But Iraq and the United States
have urged Ankara to refrain from a major operation.
Her visit coincides with increasingly anti-U.S. sentiment in Turkey
and residual anger after a resolution passed by a U.S. congressional
committee this month that called the 1915 massacre of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks a genocide.
Rice will meet President Abdullah Gul as well as Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan, who is going to Washington next week for talks with President
George W. Bush over how to tackle the PKK threat.
"Effective action means action that can deal with the threat but that
isn’t going to make the situation worse," Rice said.
"We really need to look for an effective strategy and not just one that
will strike out somehow and still not deal with the problem," she said,
though she declined to detail what action Washington might undertake.
SANCTIONS
But she said short-term measures included better information-sharing
with the Turks and making it harder for the PKK to move around in
northern Iraq.
Turkey plans economic sanctions that would target the outlawed PKK
and groups providing them with support in northern Iraq, a move Rice
said the United States could follow.
"We have never had difficulty in trying to deny assets to terrorist
organizations, so that is something that we might look at," Rice
said. "But I don’t want to get into specifics of what we might or
might not do," she added.
Rice said measures on how to deal with the PKK would be discussed at
a meeting between herself and ministers from Turkey and Iraq on the
sidelines of an Iraq neighbors conference in Istanbul on Saturday.
"We have a common enemy. We are going to act as if we have a common
enemy, which means that we are going to work with our Turkish allies
and with the Iraqis," she said.
Rice is also set to meet Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in
Istanbul and will press him as well as the Kurdish regional government
(KRG) to do more to stop the PKK.
Rice spoke last week by phone to Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani
and delivered the same message.
"I made the very clear point that the KRG needs to separate
itself from the PKK in a very, very clear and rhetorical way and he
(Barzani) assured me that they had no intention of harboring the PKK,
no intention of supporting the PKK, no intention of trying to do
anything but root out terrorism in northern Iraq," said Rice.
Turkey accuses the KRG of providing shelter and support to an estimated
3,000 PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq. Barzani denies these claims.