Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 16/08/07 - 03/11/07

Our Reporters deny any Turkish Incursion into the Kurdistan Region Territory in Depth of 10 km

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and spokesman for the Turkish government, Jamil Gechik, announced that after the killing of 12 Turkish soldiers a few days ago during battles between fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party and the Turkish army in the region of Hakari, since last night the Turkish aircrafts of F-16 type bombarded the PKK strongholds in the Kurdistan region, adding that those strongholds was shelled also and that the Turkish government will respond to the PKK attacks through appropriate ways.

A high-ranking Turkish military official said that the Turkish forces have crossed 10 kilometers deep inside the Kurdistan region.

In a phone call with our correspondents in the Zakho, Amedi and Batoveh they said that they had not seen any such Turkish military incursion.

PUKmedia :: English - Our Reporters deny any Turkish Incursion into the Kurdistan Region Territory in Depth of 10 km

Opinion Piece - You might not like it - but food for thought.

Endgame for Iraqi Oil? The Sovereignty Showdown in Iraq

The oil game in Iraq may be almost up. On September 29th, like a landlord serving notice, the government of Iraq announced that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq -- the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation -- will be the last. That was, it seems, the first shoe to fall. The second may be an announcement terminating the little-noticed, but crucial companion Security Council mandate governing the disposition of Iraq's oil revenues.

By December 31, 2008, according to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the government of Iraq intends to have replaced the existing mandate for a multinational security force with a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States, an agreement of the sort that Washington has with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries in the Middle East. The Security Council has always paired the annual renewal of its mandate for the multinational force with the renewal of a second mandate for the management of Iraqi oil revenues. This happens through the "Development Fund for Iraq," a kind of escrow account set up by the occupying powers after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and recognized in 2003 by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483. The oil game will be up if and when Iraq announces that this mandate, too, will be terminated at a date certain in favor of resource-development agreements that -- like the envisioned security agreement -- match those of other states in the region.

The game will be up because, as Antonia Juhasz pointed out last March in a New York Times op-ed, "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?":

"Iraq's neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia…. have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced."

By contrast, the oil legislation now pending in the Iraqi parliament awards foreign oil companies coveted, long-term, 20-35 year contracts of just the sort that neighboring oil-producers have rejected for decades. It also places the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.

The news that the duly elected government of Iraq is exercising its limited sovereignty to set a date for termination of the American occupation radically undercuts all discussion in Congress or by American presidential candidates of how soon the U.S. occupation of Iraq may "safely" end. Yet if, by the same route, Iraq were to resume full and independent control over the world's third-largest proven oil reserves -- 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion at today's prices -- a politically incorrect question might break rudely out of the Internet universe and into the mainstream media world, into, that is, the open: Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset?

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan evidently thought so or so he indicated in a single sentence in his recent memoir: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." When asked, Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander who oversaw three and a half years of the American occupation of Iraq, agreed. "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that," he said during a roundtable discussion at Stanford University. These confessions validated the suspicions of foreign observers too numerous to count. Veteran security analyst Thomas Powers observed in the New York Review of Books recently:

What it was only feared the Russians might do [by invading Afghanistan in the 1980s] the Americans have actually done -- they have planted themselves squarely astride the world's largest pool of oil, in a position potentially to control its movement and to coerce all the governments who depend on that oil. Americans naturally do not suspect their own motives but others do. The reaction of the Russians, the Germans, and the French in the months leading up to the war suggests that none of them wished to give Americans the power which [former National Security Adviser Zbigniew] Brzezinski had feared was the goal of the Soviets.

Apologists for the war point out lamely that the United States imports only a small fraction of its oil from Iraq, but what matters, rather obviously, is not Iraq's current exports but its reserves.

Before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said, "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil." In the twenty-first century's version of the "Great Game" of nineteenth century imperialism, the Bush administration made a colossal gamble that Iraq could become a kind of West Germany or South Korea on the Persian Gulf -- a federal republic with a robust, oil-exporting economy, a rising standard of living, and a set of U.S. bases that would guarantee lasting American domination of the most resource-strategic region on the planet. The political half of that gamble has already been lost, but the Bush administration has proven adamantly unwilling to accept the loss of the economic half, the oil half, without a desperate fight. Perhaps the five super-bases that the U.S. has been constructing in Iraq for as many as 20,000 troops each, plus the ill-built super-embassy (the largest on the planet) it has been constructing inside the Green Zone, will suffice to maintain American control over the oil reserves, even in defiance of international law and the officially stated wishes of the Iraqi people -- but perhaps not.

Blackwater and the Sovereignty Showdown

In any case, a kind of slow-motion showdown may lie not so far ahead; and, during the past weeks, we may have been given a clue as to how it could unfold. Recall that after the gunning down of at least 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad square, Prime Minister al-Maliki demanded that the State Department dismiss and punish the trigger-happy private security firm, Blackwater USA, which was responsible for the safety of American diplomatic personnel in Iraq. He further demanded that the immunity former occupation head L. Paul Bremer III had granted, in 2004, to all such private security firms be revoked. Startled, the Bush administration briefly grounded its diplomatic operations, then defiantly resumed them -- with security still provided by Blackwater. Within days, though, Bush found himself face-to-face in New York with al-Maliki for discussions whose topic National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley revealingly named as "Iraqi sovereignty." Who would blink first?

We're still waiting to see, but in the wake of an Iraqi investigation ended with a demand for $8 million compensation for each of the 17 murdered Baghdadis, Blackwater is reportedly "on its way out" of security responsibility in Iraq, probably by the six-month deadline that al-Maliki has demanded. De****e its disgrace, the well-connected private security company continues to win lucrative State Department security contracts. Blackwater expert Jeremy Scahill told Bill Moyers that losing the Iraq gig would only slightly affect Blackwater's bottom line, but could grievously inconvenience U.S. diplomatic operations in Iraq. In forcing such a crisis on the State Department, the al-Maliki government, whose powerlessness has been an assumption unchallenged from left or right (in or out of Iraq), suddenly looks a good deal stronger.

But oil matters more to Washington than Blackwater does. In September, when the effort to enact U.S.-favored oil legislation -- a much-announced "benchmark" of both the White House and Congress -- collapsed in Iraq's legislature, the coup de grace seemed to be delivered by a wildcat agreement between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Hunt Oil of Dallas, Texas, headed by Ray L. Hunt, a longtime Bush ally and a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. This agreement, undertaken against the stated wishes of the central government, provides for the separate development of Kurdistan's oil resources and puts the Kurds in blatant, preemptive violation of the pending legislation. It makes, in fact, such a mockery of that legislation that the prospect of its passage before the Development Fund mandate expires is now vanishingly small.

Endgame for Iraqi Oil?

If the mandate expires and the law is not passed, then what? Then others in Iraq may well seek to follow the Kurdish example and cut comparable deals with whomever they wish. The central government, even if it has lost effective control of the Kurdish north and the Sunni west, could well ratify resource-separatism by contracting for the development of the oil resources in the territory generally remaining under its control. Thus, a new, Iran-allied, oil-rich, nine-province Shiite Iraq could match Kurdistan's deal with one of its own, perhaps even with ready-and-willing China. Will any combination of American military and diplomatic pressure suffice to stop such an untoward outcome?

Clearly, some in Washington still think so. Shortly before the collapse of the Iraqi oil legislation effort, Bush's Commerce Department began quietly advertising for an Arabic-speaking legal advisor to help it in "providing technical assistance to Iraq to create a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraq's key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector." (Read: starting with oil.) As it happens, the job description overlaps heavily with that of the Development Fund for Iraq's existing International Advisory and Monitoring Board, whose responsibility, according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483, has been to see to it "that all export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq…. shall be made consistent with prevailing international marketing best practices." Is the Commerce Department already planning for the demise of this board? Like the super-embassy and the super-bases, this bit of Commerce Department staffing-up bespeaks the urge to continue an invasive American presence in Iraq, including Iraq's energy sector, long after December 31, 2008.

But if the occupation is shut down legally after that date and if Iraqi control over Iraqi oil reverts -- legally, at least -- to something close to pre-war status, that Commerce Department expert may find him or herself playing a less-than-major role in Baghdad. Instead, expect a new role for Iraq's hitherto excluded pool of domestic expertise. The Iraq National Oil Company began operations back in 1961; its legacy includes a skilled work force of trained oil workers. Notable, in fact, among those opposed to the failed oil legislation is the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions. Its members object to provisions in the legislation that permit the hiring of foreign oil workers rather than Iraqis and -- in classic Bush Administration fashion -- exclude the union from any participation in contract negotiations. The Federation's protests have attracted a letter of support signed by six Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Even with Iraqi expertise duly factored in, oil remains a complicated business, and foreign expertise and capital will remain indispensable in Iraq. Still, for the Shiite-dominated central government, the most trusted foreign supplier of supplementary expertise, manpower, and even capital would seem to be Iran. For now, the United States is paying many of the salaries in Baghdad; but Iran's president, predicting an American withdrawal, has lately declared his readiness to "fill the [regional power] gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation." This invitation to regional collaboration will surely strike the less populous, militarily more vulnerable Saudis as disingenuous in the extreme, but Iran may be hard to stop. As former ambassador Peter Galbraith has explained: "Since 2005, Iraq's Shiite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political, and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries' strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraq government." On Oct. 17, the al-Maliki regime flexed its supposedly non-existent muscle yet again by awarding $1.1 billion in contracts to Iran and China to build enormous power plants in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City and between the two Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

The prospect that, in the endgame for Iraqi oil, the victor might be Shiite Iran (and indirectly Communist China) may help explain recent American calls for the replacement of the devoutly Shiite Prime Minister al-Maliki. Yet, even if American pressure leads to al-Maliki's ouster, the Iraqi parliament cannot be ousted with him. The prime minister's announcement that the next renewal of the multi-force mandate would be the last came, in fact, in response to a binding resolution in parliament that the next renewal, unlike previous ones, may not be at the request of the prime minister alone, but only with the advice and consent of parliament. It has voted once already, in a non-binding resolution, to require the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Fragile as it is, the government of Iraq enjoys international legal recognition, and the underestimated al-Maliki is evidently not without resources when it comes to asserting Iraqi sovereignty over American autonomy within Iraq's borders. In "Blackwatergate," he found a remarkable pressure point, declaring that no new law would be passed in Iraq until the Blackwater matter was resolved to his satisfaction. Nor was al-Maliki necessarily whistling in the dark when he warned his American critics, "We can find friends elsewhere."

The expiration date that Iraq has now set for the operation of a multinational force on its territory coincides almost exactly with the end of the Bush administration. As that date nears, the endgame question may become: How far can the administration go in repudiating its own erstwhile agenda and returning Iraq to its pre-war status -- that is, to U.S.-backed Sunni domination of Iraqi domestic politics. That would, of course, result in armed Iraqi hostility to the administration's enemy of enemies in the region, Iran, and a resigned return to collaboration with the Saudi-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the management of the world oil market, all under a largely offshore U.S. military umbrella. Will the fallback dream now be the one the President's father entertained after Gulf War I -- the creation in Baghdad of a kinder, gentler Saddam Hussein with whom, to use the classic phrase, the U.S. can "do business"?

Time will tell, but not too much time. The eerie silence of the Bush administration about oil grows all the more deafening as the price of crude climbs toward $100 a barrel. Blood for oil may never have been a good deal, but so much blood for no oil at all may seem a far worse one.

Jack Miles is senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Relations and professor of English and religious studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning God: A Biography, among other works.

Copyright 2007 Jack Miles

Endgame for Iraqi Oil? The Sovereignty Showdown in Iraq | AfterDowningStreet.org

Clarification from the Office of the President Talabani on Alleged Extradition of PKK Leaders to Ankara

Iraqi Presidency Office announced the following clarification about the press reports about the extradition of PKK leaders to Ankara:

1. We have repeatedly affirmed that the leaders of the Kurdistan Workers Party are not present in the Iraqi Kurdish cities but living with a thousand of their fighters in the mountains of the rugged Qandil, so it is not possible to arrest them, de****e extraditing them to Turkey.


2. What President Talabani intended of not extraditing any Iraqi Kurdish, was in response to a strange question and a wondrous request to extradite some Iraqi Kurdish leaders to Turkish authorities because it is opposite to the Iraqi Constitution, which the President vowed for its maintenance and it is also contrary to the Iraqi ethics and international norms.

Iraqi Presidency Office

PUKmedia :: English - Clarification from the Office of the President Talabani on Alleged Extradition of PKK Leaders to A

Clarification from KRG Representation in the US

KRG Representation in the US announced the following clarification:

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) continues to strongly urge intense and focused diplomatic actions to solve the regional problem between the PKK and Turkey .The KRG condemns all acts of terrorism but remains deeply concerned that a cross-border military strike by Turkey into Iraqi Kurdistan would trigger a wider and more dangerous escalation of the current situation.

Remarkets to the Chicago Tribune by Qubad Talabani ,representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington, that “ Turkey will be ablaze the next day” after a cross-border military action into Iraq, or air strikes by the US or Turkey, underscore the concern among Iraqi Kurds that PKK elements inside Turkey would use any military maneuver as justification to inflame nationalists sentiments among Turkish Kurds and ratchet up their violence inside of Turkey .The remarks were not reflective of any reactions or actions, planned, expected or endorsed in any way by Iraqi Kurds or the Kurdistan Regional Government.

KRG Representation in the US

PUKmedia :: English - Clarification from KRG Representation in the US

UN pays $470 million from Iraqi oil fund to victims of Iraq's 1990 Kuwait invasion

GENEVA (AP) - The U.N. panel overseeing compensation for victims of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait said Wednesday it has paid a $469.6 million installment from Iraqi oil funds to cover claims for losses and damages.

The latest transfer consists of 32 separate payments - ranging from $2 million to $22 million - to governments, corporations and international groups in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.

The U.N. Compensation Commission, which is made up of the 15 U.N. Security Council member countries, said it has so far paid out nearly $23 billion in compensation. A further 28 claims remain to be paid, it said.
Money to pay the claims comes from Iraqi oil sales. The commission has approved $52.5 billion in total compensation.

The U.S. drove Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War. Until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, the commission received 25 percent of the proceeds from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which allowed Saddam's regime to sell oil and buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods de****e international sanctions.

Since the invasion, the amount the commission receives from export sales of Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products has been reduced to 5 percent.

Santa Barbara News-Press

Kurdish fighters defy the world from mountain fortress as bombing begins

Turkey used its helicopters and artillery to attack Kurdish guerrillas inside northern Iraq yesterday as the Turkish army massed just north of the border. The helicopter gunships penetrated three miles into Iraqi territory and warplanes targeted mountain paths used by rebels entering Turkey.

Guerrilla commanders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were defiant in the face of an impending invasion. In an interview high in the Qandil mountains, Bozan Tekin, a PKK leader, said: "Even Alexander the Great couldn't bring this region under his rule." The PKK has its headquarters in the Qandil mountains, one of the world's great natural fortresses in the east of Iraqi Kurdistan, stretching south from the south-east tip of Turkey along the Iranian border. If Turkey, or anybody else, is to try to drive the PKK out of northern Iraq they would have to capture this bastion and it is unlikely they will succeed.

De****e threats of action by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, the PKK leaders give no sense of feeling that their enemies were closing in.

For a guerrilla movement awaiting assault, the PKK's leaders are surprisingly easy to find. We drove east from Arbil for two-and-a-half hours and hired a four-wheel drive car in the village of Sangassar. Iraqi police wearing camouflage uniform were at work building a new outpost out of cement blocks beside the road leading into the mountains but only took our names.

In fact the four-wheel drive was hardly necessary because there is a military road constructed by Saddam Hussein's army in the 1980s which zig-zags along the side of a steep valley until it reaches the first PKK checkpoint. The PKK soldiers with Kalashnikovs and two grenades pinned to the front of their uniform were relaxed and efficient. In case anybody should have any doubt about who was in control there was an enormous picture of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan picked out in yellow, black, white and red painted stones on a hill half a mile away and visible over a wide area.

There were no sign that threats from Mr Maliki in Baghdad or from the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, were having an effect. The PKK soldiers at a small guest house had not been expecting us but promptly got in touch with their local headquarters.

For all its nonchalance the PKK is facing a formidable array of enemies. The Iraqi government in Baghdad has no direct influence over the Kurdistan Regional Government, led by President Massoud Barzani whose administration is made up of his own Kurdistan Democratic Party and President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. This is the only force capable of trying to eject the 3,000 PKK fighters.

So far the KRG shows no sign of doing so. One reason is that, paradoxically, the Turkish government will not talk to the KRG although it is the only Iraqi institution that might help it – Ankara is fearful of the growing strength of the KRG as a quasi-independent state on its borders.
So far the PKK is benefiting substantially from the crisis which started this summer when it began to make more attacks within Turkey. Instead of being politically marginalised in its hidden valleys, it is suddenly at the centre of international attention. This will help it try to rebuild its battered political base within Turkey where it suffered defeat in the 1990s and where its leader Abdullah Ocalan has been imprisoned since 1999.

Asked if the Turkish forces could inflict damage on the PKK, one of its fighters, called Intikam, said: "Three out of five of our fighters are hiding in the mountains in Turkey and, if the Turkish army cannot find them there, it will hardly find them in Iraq."

Bozan Tekin and Mizgin Amed, a woman who is also a member of the leadership, hotly deny they are "terrorists" and ask plaintively why there is not more attention given to Kurds who have been killed by the Turkish army. They add that they have been observing a ceasefire since since 1 October 2006 and fight in retaliation for Turkish attacks.

"Since then the Turks have launched 485 attacks on us," says Bozan Tekin. "Even an animal – any living thing – will fight when it feels it is in a dangerous situation," said Mizgin Amed. Both the PKK leaders were chary of giving details of last Sunday's ambush in which at least 16 Turkish soldiers were killed and eight captured. This is because the ambush is a little difficult to square with their defensive posture. But Bozan Tekin said that in reality "35 Turkish soldiers were killed and only three PKK fighters were lightly wounded. We did not lose anyone dead." He claimed that an attack on a minibus, which Turkey blamed on the PKK, was in fact carried out by Turkish soldiers on a Kurdish wedding party.

Overall, although it does not say so openly, the PKK would welcome a Turkish military invasion of northern Iraq because it would embroil Turkey with the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi army. It would also pose almost no threat to the PKK.

Kurdish fighters defy the world from mountain fortress as bombing begins | Iraq Updates

Turkish Planes Pound Rebels Along Border

Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships reportedly pounded Kurdish rebel positions along the Turkey-Iraq border Wednesday, broadening military operations against insurgents amid persistent fears Turkey will launch a major offensive inside Iraq.

"I don't know of any Turkish airstrikes in that area today," Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, Joint Chiefs of Staff operational planning director, told a Defense Department press conference.

The reported airstrikes come after days of Turkish shelling in the region. On Sunday, Turkish helicopter gunships penetrated Iraqi territory after Kurdish rebels ambushed a Turkish military convoy near the border, killing 12 soldiers and leaving eight others missing.

U.S.-made Cobra and Super Cobra attack helicopters also chased Kurdish rebels three miles into Iraqi territory on Sunday before returning to their bases in Turkey, a government official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Turkey, which has moved troops to the Iraq border, warned Iraq and Western allies on Tuesday that a large-scale incursion was imminent unless the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad takes action against the rebels. The Turkish government said there would be no cease-fire with the fighters, who seek autonomy in Turkey's heavily Kurdish southeast.

After the meeting Wednesday, Cabinet officials and military leaders decided to recommend the government "to first take necessary economic measures against those groups directly or indirectly supporting the separatist terrorist organization in the region," a statement said.

The target of the economic measures was not made clear in the statement, but Turkey has been pondering sanctions to force the Iraqi Kurds to cooperate in its fight against the separatist rebels of PKK, the acronym of Kurdistan Workers' Party.

The self-ruling Kurdish administration in Iraq's north has benefited from Turkish investment for construction works, including airports and housing projects. Ankara is also selling electricity to northern Iraq, and much of the imported food and other supplies comes from Turkey.

In the Netherlands, Pentagon chief Robert Gates also said he saw little sense in airstrikes or major ground assaults by U.S., Turkish, or other forces against rebels in northern Iraq until more is known about their locations along the border.

Turkish Cabinet members and military generals held a six-hour meeting in Ankara to discuss a possible operation in northern Iraq, but decided to recommend the government take economic measures first to force cooperation by Iraqis against Kurdish rebels.

The state-run Anatolia news agency reported that Turkish warplanes and attack helicopters bombed mountain paths used by rebels to cross the porous border from Iraq and stage hit-and-run attacks against soldiers in southeastern Turkey.

Residents in the Iraqi Kurdish village of Derishkit told an Associated Press reporter that two Turkish jet fighters struck a target on the banks of the Zey-Gowra River about four miles inside Iraq. They were unable to offer any more details about the apparent attack.

An AP Television News cameraman also saw eight F-16s loaded with bombs and attack helicopters take off after nightfall from a base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. The cameraman also saw about a dozen transport helicopters fly along Mount Cudi near the border with Iraq and at least one warplane fly past Cizre, a town close to the border.

The Anatolia news agency report said the warplanes and helicopters took off from Diyarbakir and "are reported to have bombed and destroyed bases of the terrorists."

Pentagon officials declined to confirm reports of airstrikes.

"Without good intelligence, just sending large numbers of troops across the border (from Turkey) or dropping bombs doesn't seem to make much sense to me," Gates said.

Turkey's military and civilian leaders face growing demands at home to stage an offensive in northern Iraq, where the PKK rebels rest, train and get supplies in relative safety before heading to Turkey to conduct attacks.

Turkey has long pressed Iraq to capture and extradite Kurdish rebel leaders.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also has ordered the closure of all PKK offices in Iraq and said they would not be allowed to operate in Iraqi territory. In addition, the U.S. on Tuesday issued its most direct demand yet for anti-rebel measures from the government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

About 100 members of the official defense forces of Iraq's Kurdish region were headed Wednesday for a camp near the border city of Duhok, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

One of them, who would only identify himself as Capt. Ziad, said his troops had been mobilized from Erbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish region. "We want to prevent the conflict in Turkey from coming across the border," he said.

PUKmedia :: English - Turkish Planes Pound Rebels Along Border

KRG Head of Security Says Military Means Offer no Solution

In an interview yesterday with Al-Jazeera English Television, Mr. Masrour Barzani, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Head of Security, said that the PKK cannot achieve anything through violence and armed struggle, and that the PKK should hold talks with Turkey to solve the ongoing problem.

He was speaking in reaction to the Turkish parliament’s vote last week allowing the Turkish government to carry out military operations in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq against PKK fighters in the mountainous border area.

Mr. Barzani said, “This is a political problem, it’s not a military problem, and it will not be solved by military operations.”

When asked about the possibility of Turkish covert operations inside the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, he said that the KRG is opposed to the violation of Iraqi sovereignty. He added that PKK fighters are in a remote and isolated area that is very hard for anyone to reach and tackle militarily.

He stressed that the KRG wants good relations with Turkey, but did not want to be dragged into a Turkish internal problem that has existed for decades. He said, “This is an ongoing internal problem between Turkey and its own citizens. We will not allow anyone to drag us into this internal problem, and hope that Turkey doesn’t export its own problems into our Region."

PUKmedia :: English - KRG Head of Security Says Military Means Offer no Solution

PKK Requested Qandil Mountain Villages Residence to Leave

A private source from the border areas of Kurdistan Region informed us that the PKK elements requested from the border villages residence in Qandil Mountain to leave their houses to avoid a Turkish military operation in the area.

According to Politic analysts, the Turkish military operation to eliminate PKK elements is becoming imminent.

The Turkish government threatened to enter the territories of Kurdistan Region under the pretence of following the PKK elements in the border mountainous areas, especially after the clashes between them this week in Hakari Province which caused casualties on both sides.

PUKmedia :: English - PKK Requested Qandil Mountain Villages Residence to Leave

Kurdish leaders divided over Turkish demands

Divisions have surfaced in the Kurdish political ranks since Turkey asked Iraq to extradite leaders of Kurdistan Worker's Party which is accused of using the mountains of northern Iraq as bases to launch attacks on Turkish military targets.

Abdul Salam Haji, a Kurdish political researcher, told Gulf News: "The position of Massoud Barzani, president of Kurdistan region, is extremely difficult.

"He has to choose between being a historical leader for Kurds who spent most of his early years fighting for the Kurds [against] Saddam Hussain and thus he will refuse to monitor Iraq-Turkish borders and address [Kurdistan Worker's Party] PKK elements for Turkey's benefit.

"Or he has to comply with pressures from US and Baghdad, urging him to ... hunt down the PKK elements in Kurdistan."

Options

Among the options available, is launching raids with the help of US warplanes against PKK elements in mountains of Zakho and Amadiyah in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdish provinces.

The option inevitably needs intelligence cooperation from Kurdish leaders in Arbil, as Peshmergas are best aware of the territory where they fought Saddam's regime for 20 years.

The issue is far from intelligence cooperation, said Munder Al Zaubai, a former Iraqi army officer. He told Gulf News: "Ankara has evidences that Barzani ... is Kurdistan security agency supervisor, he also has a confidential coordination with the PKK leaders.

"It means that Kurdish government should provide detailed information about PKK to Turkey. Besides Barzani's cooperation will lead to the arrest of senior PKK leaders and their extradition to Turkey, as happened to Abdullah Ocalan many years ago."

Sources in Arbil said politicians are divided into two camps. One is led by Barzani who opposes any sort of cooperation with Turkey to fight and pursue the PKK elements, and yet he is ready to help Ankara conduct direct political negotiations with the party.

The other camp comprises Kurdish leaders in Arbil who believe the issue is not worthy of risking Kurdistan's stability and cooperation with Turkey to hunt down the PKK elements.

They want to assure Turkey that Kurdish region of Iraq and its political evolution is not threatening Turkish security.

Kurdish leaders divided over Turkish demands | Iraq Updates