RICE TO DISCUSS IRAQ AND KURDISH REBELS WITH TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER

AP Worldstream
Feb 05, 2007

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet with Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul on Tuesday to talk about Iraq, including the
issue of Kurdish rebels using Iraq as a springboard for attacks on
Turkish territory, the State Department said Monday.

Turkey has been unhappy with the level of U.S. cooperation in rooting
out militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK holed up in
the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Also on the agenda will be Iran and Turkey’s application to join the
European Union, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Gul was expected to ask Rice to oppose a congressional resolution,
introduced in January by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, urging
the U.S. government to recognize as genocide the mass killings of
Armenians at the end of World War I.

Turkey has adamantly denied claims by scholars that its predecessor
state, the Ottoman government, caused the Armenian deaths in a planned
genocide. The Turkish government has said the toll is wildly inflated,
and Armenians were killed or displaced in civil unrest during the
disarray surrounding the empire’s collapse.