US sends top envoys as Turkey gears up plans for Iraq incursion

Oct 13, 2007, 13:03 GMT

Ankara - The United States dispatched two top officials to Ankara on Saturday amid a breakdown in relations between the two NATO allies and growing concern that Turkey plans to launch a unilateral military operation into northern Iraq to destroy rebel Kurdish bases, Turkish media reported.

The one-day visit to Ankara by Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried and Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman comes after a week of increasingly belligerent comments from Turkish leaders that the government is ready to launch a cross-border operation whether Washington is in favour or not.

The last two weeks have seen more than two dozen Turkish soldiers and civilians killed in attacks by the rebel Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) putting pressure on the government to launch a raid on PKK camps.

The Turkish parliament is expected to vote next week to give permission for a cross-border operation to destroy PKK bases in mountainous northern Iraq. It is not clear though when or if the government would actually order such an incursion.

Turkish media reported that Fried and Edelman are expected to argue against any such operation. Washington fears that such an incursion could spark unrest and fighting in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, the one area of Iraq which is relatively calm.

Exactly how much leverage the US has over Turkey is unclear though with Ankara extremely angry after a US congressional committee passed a resolution on Wednesday labelling the First World War massacres of Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire as a genocide.

Turkey denies that the killing constitute a genocide and that instead the deaths came about because of an uprising of Armenians against the state

The Anadolu news agency on Saturday reported that Trade Minister Kursad Tuzman had cancelled a planned visit next month to the United States in protest at the passing of the genocide resolution.