TURKEY INTENSIFIES MILITARY PRESENCE ON IRAQ BORDER

PanARMENIAN.Net
30.05.2007 17:34 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey has sent large contingents of soldiers,
tanks and armored personnel carriers to reinforce its border with Iraq
amid a heated debate over whether to stage a cross-border offensive
to hit Kurdish rebel bases.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged the United States
and Iraq to destroy bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK,
in northern Iraq as the Turkish military deployed more tanks and
soldiers on the border.

Images of military trucks rumbling along the remote border with
Iraq’s Kurdish zone and tanks being transferred on trains and
trucks to reinforce an already formidable force there have dominated
television screens and the front pages of several newspapers in the
past few weeks.

The Turkish military has said it routinely reinforces the border with
Iraq in the summer to prevent infiltration by the guerrillas.

"The PKK must be eliminated as a problem between Iraq and Turkey,"
Turkey’s special envoy to Iraq, Oguz Celikkol, told CNN-Turk television
today before visiting Iraq to discuss demands that Iraq and US forces
crack down on the group.

Asked whether Turkey could take unilateral action, Celikkol said:
"Our expectation is that this issue is resolved before it comes to
that point."

Erdogan did not rule out a cross-border Turkish operation.

"The target is to achieve results. Our patience has run out. The
necessary steps will be taken when needed," he said.

In the past, cross-border operations have yielded mixed results,
with many guerrillas sheltering in hide-outs and emerging to fight
again once the bulk of Turkish units withdrew from Iraq.

The Turkish military says up to 3,800 rebels are now based across
the border in Iraq and that up to 2,300 operate inside Turkey.

Iraqi Kurdish groups who run the northern Iraq have threatened to
resist a Turkish incursion. If U.S.

forces take action they risk alienating Iraqi Kurds, the most
pro-American group in the region. If they don’t, they risk increased
tensions – and possibly worse – with two powerful rivals, the IOL
reports.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress