Middle East News
Turkey and Iraq agree to continue anti-PKK cooperation
Jan 23, 2009, 13:28 GMT
Ankara - Turkey and Iraq agreed Friday to continue cooperation in ridding northern Iraq of the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) which uses the mountainous region as a base from which to launch attacks inside Turkey.
'There is a new climate, a new atmosphere of cooperation between Iraq, Turkey and the United States,' Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in Ankara Friday after talks with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan.
Zebari said that it was necessary to cooperate politically, and in the fields of economics and intelligence in order to remove what he described a 'poisonous element.'
Babacan said that steps had been taken to remove the PKK and that fully normalized relations between Iraq and Turkey cannot be realised until the PKK no longer operate in northern Iraq.
Zebari also commented on the launch by Turkish state broadcaster TRT earlier this month of a Kurdish-language television station saying it was a 'wise move' and would help in solving the problems of south-east Turkey.
'Who would have thought five years, or even three years ago that this would have happened,' said Zebari, himself an ethnic Kurd.
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