Turkey to push Iraq for action against PKK

Oct 13, 2008, 10:25 GMT

Ankara - Turkey is to send a government delegation to Baghdad Tuesday in an attempt to push authorites in northern Iraq to clamp down on the activities of the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) who use the mountainous northern areas as a base to launch attacks inside Turkey, the NTV private television station reported.

The delegation is expected to meet Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Administration, and to express Ankara's disappointment that more action is not being taken against the PKK.

There has been a marked increase in the number of PKK attacks inside Turkey in recent months, the largest being an attack on a military border post on October 3 that left 17 Turkish soldiers and 23 PKK fighters dead.

Since the attack the Turkish Air Force have conducted almost daily bombing raids on suspected PKK positions in northern Iraq.

The Turkish military has said that the Kurdistan Regional Administration have been giving indirect support to the PKK through treating injured PKK fighters in hospitals and through allowing the PKK to use infrastructure such as roads and bridges in northern Iraq.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 35,000 people since the early 1980s when the group began its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated south-east.

The European Union, the United States and Iraq all consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization.