Turkey is "in the process of implementing" a cross-border operation against Kurdish guerrillas who use northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks, a senior Turkish general said last night.
But there were no immediate signs of increased military activity along Turkey's mountainous border with Iraq yesterday.
General Ilker Basbug
"We are in the process of implementing the cross-border operation," General Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces and the second most powerful man in the armed forces, told reporters at a diplomatic reception in the Turkish capital.
Basbug did not spell out exactly what he meant.
Turkey's parliament approved last month a government request to be able to launch cross-border operations into northern Iraq.
"When or how the motion (on a cross-border operation) will be implemented is another issue," Basbug said, according to state-run Anatolian news agency.
Turkey has amassed as many as 100,000 troops, backed by warplanes, helicopters and tanks, for a possible cross-border incursion to root out the separatist rebels, blamed by Ankara for a series of attacks on its security personnel.
Analysts say authorities have stepped up the rhetoric to put pressure US and Iraqi authorities to move against the rebels.
One senior US military official in Baghdad said he was not immediately aware of any Turkish action. Iraqi government officials could not be reached for comment.
On Tuesday security sources said Turkey had sent hundreds of special forces to the border to bolster its forces there.
Washington has urged Ankara to avoid a large-scale incursion, fearing it could destabilise the most peaceful part of Iraq and cause a bigger regional crisis.
Basbug's comments followed a reaffirmation by the government this week that Turkey was ready to carry out an offensive against some 3,000 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants based in the mountains of northern Iraq.
The PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, Turkey and the European Union, took up arms in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.
Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.