Turkish troops enter northern Iraq

18/12/2007| IslamWeb

A group of 300 Turkish troops crossed into Kurdish territory in northern Iraq overnight and moved about three kilometres deeper into Iraq on Tuesday morning.

A senior Iraqi military source said the Turkish troops were lightly armed and moved into the Gali Rash area, a mountainous district near the border.

This first ground incursion comes as Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, made an unannounced visit to Kirkuk in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Turkey says it wants to flush out Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) fighters that carry out attacks on Turkey from bases in Iraq.

Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for the Kurdish peshmerga security force, confirmed the incursion.

Yawar said: "The area they entered is a deserted area and there is no Iraqi force or peshmerga deployed there."

Iraq's Kurdish regional government condemned the incursion.

Fouad Hussein, head of the office of Kurdish regional president, Mahmoud Barzani, said: "We condemn this incursion. Turkey wants to transfer the problem on to the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan."

He did not confirm the size of the Turkish force.

A website linked to the party of Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, said as many as 700 Turkish troops had gone as far as eight kilometres into Iraq.

Rice visit

Rice's visit to oil-rich Kirkuk is said to be aimed at supporting reconciliation efforts made by the new UN envoy in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, in the religiously and ethnically diverse city in.

During her visit, Rice will meet representatives of the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia Arab, Christian and Turkmen communities.

On Monday, Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the autonomous Kurdish regional government, said his administration favored delaying by six months a referendum on the future of Kirkuk, easing  immediate tensions among the mixed population.

"The regional government is in favor of this extension," Barzani said, after meeting in the central city of Najaf with the influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

According to article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, the referendum had been due to be held by the end of 2007 to decide whether the region with its oil wealth should go under the control of the autonomous Kurdish government.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Turkish soldier near the border with Iraq