KurdistanObserver.com
Kurdistan Regional President Warns Turkey, Says Bombing
Raids Are Unacceptable
The Associated Press
Monday, December 24, 2007
BAGHDAD: Iraq's Kurdish regional president warned neighboring
Turkey on Monday that he was losing patience with its repeated bombing raids
against guerrilla positions in the north, but acknowledged there was little he
could do to stop them.
Massoud Barzani said his people "cannot accept" the bombing raids and shelling
to continue and condemned the attacks which began on Dec. 16. On Sunday, Turkish
fighter jets bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets inside Iraqi Kurdistan territory,
in the fourth cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or
PKK, in one week.
"We cannot accept this situation to continue," Barzani told reporters in the
northern city of Sulaimani. "We cannot accept our villages to be bombed and our
people killed."
Barzani refused to meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she made a
surprise visit to Iraq on Dec. 18, two days after the Turks began their
bombings.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, said Iraq's foreign minister had
summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad and lodged a formal complaint, but
said he did not want to exacerbate tensions between Iraq and its neighbor. He
was standing next to Barzani.
The PKK has since 1984 fought to set up an independent Kurdish state in
southeast Turkey.
The United States and Iraq have asked Turkey to show restraint in its response
to the guerrillas, fearing that a large Turkish incursion could destabilize what
has been Iraq's most peaceful area.
