Turkey wants Washington to assist in settlement of Kurdish problem

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.