TURKEY:The United States promised yesterday to try to help stop Kurdish guerrillas operating in northern Iraq in an effort to stave off a Turkish military intervention which could destabilise the region.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice called the militants a "common enemy". But she did not spell out what Washington might do to stop them using Iraq as a base for attacks on Turkey, where they are seeking an independent Kurdish state.
"We all need to redouble our efforts and the United States is committed to redoubling our efforts," Ms Rice told a news conference with Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan in Ankara.
Mr Babacan expressed Turkish frustration at the lack of action so far against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). "This is where the words end and action needs to start," he said.
Ms Rice said that the PKK would be discussed at a meeting between herself and ministers from Turkey and Iraq on the sidelines of an Iraq neighbours' conference in Istanbul today.
Turkey, a Nato member with the alliance's second-biggest army, has sent up to 100,000 troops to the Iraqi border, backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft. Baghdad and Washington have urged Ankara to refrain from a major operation in an area which has been spared the worst of the violence in Iraq.
"We know fully well that our neighbour Turkey is not willing to destabilise Iraq. Both of us are against the common enemy, the PKK terrorist organisation that threatens Turkey and threatens Iraq as well," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters in Istanbul.
Ankara has said that it will take cross-border action shortly to root out some 3,000 PKK militants in northern Iraq if US and Iraqi forces fail to follow up on past pledges of action.
In remarks which appeared to justify Turkish scepticism about Iraq's ability to tackle the PKK, Mr al-Dabbagh said: "It is not in our capacity, it is not even in the capacity of Turkey. [ Our shared border] is like the Afghan-Pakistan border. The United States has bombed al-Qaeda there for five to six years and they cannot get rid of them there."
Up to 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK took up its armed struggle for Kurdish self-rule in south-east Turkey in 1984. Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, will meet US president George W. Bush on Monday in Washington.