GATES SEES NO IMMINENT TURKISH ATTACK
By Robert Burns
The Associated Press
Oct 22 2007
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday it
appears Turkey’s military is not on the verge of invading northern
Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels responsible for a deadly attack on
Turkish soldiers.
Gates told reporters that in a meeting with Turkish Defense Minister
Vecdi Gonul, he advised against launching a major cross-border
incursion despite the continuing provocations.
"I’m heartened that he seems to be implying a reluctance on their
part to act unilaterally, and I think that’s a good thing," Gates
said. "I didn’t have the impression that anything was imminent."
On the Turkish-Iraq border, rebels blew up a bridge, killing 12
soldiers Sunday morning. The attack increased pressure on the Turkish
government to strike guerrilla camps inside Iraq.
Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, ordered Kurdish guerrillas
to lay down their weapons or leave.
In a separate session with reporters after his 30-minute meeting
with Gates, Vecdi said he stressed his country’s problem with the
Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Both Turkey and the United States
consider the PKK a terrorist organization.
The White House said "these attacks are unacceptable and must stop
now." President Bush’s national security spokesman, Gordon Johndroe,
said such attacks from inside Iraq "need to be dealt with swiftly by
the Iraqi government and Kurdish regional authorities."
"The United States, Turkey and Iraq will continue to stand together
to defeat the PKK terrorists," Johndroe added.
Vecdi said his government expects the United States to do something
to stop the rebel attacks. "Our boys are dying," he said.
"I explained the public opinion suffers so much," Vecdi said. He
said this was reflected in the Turkish parliament’s willingness to
pass a motion authorizing the military to start an offensive into
northern Iraq.
Vecdi said the military was planning retaliatory action but "not
urgently." He noted that Turkey’s prime minister is to meet with
President Bush on Nov. 5. But when asked whether this meant a major
Turkish offensive was unlikely before that meeting, Vecdi said he
was not certain.
Gates stressed the U.S. position that a major Turkish incursion now
would be counterproductive.
"I told him that restraint should not be confused with weakness,"
Gates said. "I thought that a major cross-border operation would be
contrary to Turkish interests as well as our own and that of Iraq. I
told him we should work together on this, that we were very mindful
of the PKK terrorists."
The key, Gates said, is getting better information about the location
and movement of PKK militants.
"The first and foremost challenge we face – as is so often the
case with terrorism – is actionable intelligence," Gates said. That
is information upon which quick and effective military action can
be taken.
"I told him that lacking actionable intelligence, for them to send
a large force across the border without any specific targets was
likely to lead to a lot of collateral damage," Gates said, referring
to civilian casualties.
Gates also told his Turkish counterpart that a major incursion into
northern Iraq would hurt the Bush administration’s efforts to stave
off a positive vote in Congress on a resolution that would declare the
World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide. Armenian advocates
contend the Armenians died in an organized genocide. The Turks say
the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental
breakdown as the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire collapsed in the years
before Turkey was born in 1923.
Senior military officials in Washington have said in recent days that
the PKK problem is a secondary priority at a stage in the Iraq war
where U.S. troops are preoccupied with the insurgents and terrorists
who are seeking to destroy the U.S.-backed Baghdad government.
In his remarks to reporters, Vecdi said he told Gates that Turkey
expects the U.S. to do more to constrain the PKK in Iraq, although
he would not spell that out in detail.
"We’d like to have something tangible" from the Americans, he said.
"We expect this. Any kind of tangible actions."
Asked what Turkey’s military leaders were preparing for, Gonul replied:
"They are planning to cross (the) border."