Ankara, Turkey – Turkey and Iraq agreed Tuesday to try to root out Kurdish rebels from northern Iraq, but Iraq’s prime minister said his parliament would have the final say on efforts to halt the guerrillas’ cross- border attacks into Turkey.
Turkey has threatened to send troops into northern Iraq unless Iraq or the United States cracked down on the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which seeks greater autonomy for mostly Kurdish regions of southeastern Turkey. For decades, the group has maintained bases in Iraq’s Kurdish mountains.
The proposed counterterrorism agreement is aimed at forcing Iraq to commit itself officially to fighting the rebels.
“We have reached an agreement to spend all efforts to end the presence of the … PKK in Iraq,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki.
Erdogan said the leaders signed a memorandum of understanding and agreed to speed up work to finalize a counterterrorism pact.
Iraq’s cooperation may avert a Turkish incursion, which is opposed by Washington. The United States says the PKK is a terrorist group, but U.S. forces are consumed by chaos elsewhere in Iraq and want to preserve the Kurdish-dominated north as a rare spot of relative stability.
Al-Maliki’s already shaky government has been hit with a series of Cabinet desertions by both Shiite and Sunni Arabs. The prime minister may be wary of angering the Kurds as well.
While reaching agreement on Kurdish rebels, al-Maliki refused to sign the counterterrorism agreement requested by the Turkish authorities. He said it was not in his power to commit Baghdad to the agreement without first putting it before parliament and his Cabinet.
