TURKEY WANTS WASHINGTON TO ASSIST IN SETTLEMENT OF KURDISH PROBLEM
PanARMENIAN.Net
08.05.2007 19:24 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "While President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq focuses
on stopping the violence in Baghdad, trouble threatens to boil over
in Iraq’s Kurdish region to the north, which the administration
frequently holds up as an island of stability and a model for the
future," The Washington Post reports.
The long dispute between Turkey and Iraq over renegade Kurdish
fighters camped on the Iraqi side of their shared border reached
new heights last month. When the head of Iraq’s Kurdish regional
government threatened to provoke an uprising among Turkish Kurds,
Turkey responded with warnings of direct military action and an angry
complaint to Washington. Turkey has massed thousands of soldiers on
its side of the border and has warned it will dismantle the camps
in Iraq if the U.S. military will not use some of its nearly 150,000
troops in Iraq to do it.
In an effort to placate the Turks, the Bush administration recently
sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s senior aide on Iraq to meet
with Turkey’s top diplomatic and military leaders. In a television
interview there, Iraq coordinator David Satterfield blamed Iraqi
Kurdish leaders and promised that the administration will lean on
them." The Kurdish leadership must do more to address this problem
of terror and terrorists," Satterfield said.
The administration also promised to step up efforts by retired
Gen. Joseph Ralston, appointed by Bush to avert a clash between Turkey
– a NATO ally – and Iraq, The Washington Post reports.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
