Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Reuters.com
February 28, 2008
ANKARA (Reuters) -- Turkey has given no clear timeframe for ending its military operations against Kurdish PKK rebels in northern Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday after talks with Turkish officials.
Gates also reiterated Washington's call for the operation, now in its seventh day, to be as short and carefully targeted as possible.
"A specific timetable did not come up in my meeting with the defense minister, but I have three more meetings (today in Ankara)," Gates told reporters.
"It should be clear that military action alone will not end this terrorist threat," he added, saying Ankara must also take political and economic steps to isolate the PKK guerrillas and help support Turkey's large ethnic Kurdish minority.
Turkey's Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul repeated Ankara's assurances that Turkish troops would withdraw from Iraq once they had accomplished their mission against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
"Turkish soldiers entered Iraqi territory only to fight PKK targets... We have no intention against civilians, no intention to occupy any areas," Gonul said, speaking in English.
Asked when the troops would leave, he said: "(When) the mission is completed. We have no intention to stay."
The PKK has been using mountainous northern Iraq as a base from which to stage attacks on civilian and military targets inside Turkish territory.
Ankara has been urging Baghdad for years to crack down on the rebels but the Iraqi central government has more pressing security problems nearer home and in any case wields little influence in the autonomous, mainly Kurdish north.
Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the group -- considered terrorist by Washington and the European Union as well as by Turkey -- launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.
February 28, 2008
ANKARA (Reuters) -- Turkey has given no clear timeframe for ending its military operations against Kurdish PKK rebels in northern Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday after talks with Turkish officials.
Gates also reiterated Washington's call for the operation, now in its seventh day, to be as short and carefully targeted as possible.
"A specific timetable did not come up in my meeting with the defense minister, but I have three more meetings (today in Ankara)," Gates told reporters.
"It should be clear that military action alone will not end this terrorist threat," he added, saying Ankara must also take political and economic steps to isolate the PKK guerrillas and help support Turkey's large ethnic Kurdish minority.
Turkey's Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul repeated Ankara's assurances that Turkish troops would withdraw from Iraq once they had accomplished their mission against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
"Turkish soldiers entered Iraqi territory only to fight PKK targets... We have no intention against civilians, no intention to occupy any areas," Gonul said, speaking in English.
Asked when the troops would leave, he said: "(When) the mission is completed. We have no intention to stay."
The PKK has been using mountainous northern Iraq as a base from which to stage attacks on civilian and military targets inside Turkish territory.
Ankara has been urging Baghdad for years to crack down on the rebels but the Iraqi central government has more pressing security problems nearer home and in any case wields little influence in the autonomous, mainly Kurdish north.
Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the group -- considered terrorist by Washington and the European Union as well as by Turkey -- launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.