William Fallon, commander
of the US Central Command, made his remarks during a session at the
House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
US Call For Dialogue
With PKK No Slip Of Tongue
Turkish Zaman/ March 7, 2008
The top US commander in the Middle East
has suggested that dialogue between Ankara and the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) would solve Turkey's problem with Kurds, a strong sign
that an earlier call for talks with the PKK from a senior US commander was
not a slip of tongue.
"They certainly have instigated lots of trouble, and
they've had a lot of casualties in Turkey but the real solution here, to me,
is that there's some kind of accommodation reached with this group and with
the Turks inside of Turkey, to knock this off," Adm. William J. Fallon,
commander of the US Central Command, told a House of Representatives
committee hearing on Wednesday. "We certainly recognize the pain the Turks
have felt from the outlawed and activities of this group, but we know that
the long-term solution is some kind of an accommodation."
Fallon's remarks came a day after a former senior US
commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said negotiations could be
conducted with the PKK after a certain period of pressure on the group. "I
believe that the long-term solution in northern Iraq is not a military one.
And so -- but obviously there's pressure that has to be put on them, so we
can start to talk and have negotiations with these elements," Odierno,
who was second in command in Iraq for 15 months until he returned home in
mid-February, said.
Turkey and the United States have managed to ease troubles in
their ties after Washington promised to actively help Ankara in its fight
against the PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and
the European Union. But US commanders' calls for talks with the PKK are unlikely
to be welcome in Ankara, which rejects outright any sort of dialogue with a
terrorist group.
Fallon confirmed that the United States assisted Turkey in its recent
cross-border offensives against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turkish
military has carried out several aerial offensives against the PKK targets since
Dec. 16. They were followed by the eight-day ground offensive, the biggest
anti-PKK operation in a decade. "We provided indirect support to Turkish
military intelligence, helped the incursion achieve some tactical success,"
Fallon said, when asked whether the ground offensive by Turkish troops, which
ended on Feb. 29, was done with US assistance, at the House session.
He however repeated that the "real key issue here is figuring out a way to have
the Turks come to grips with this -- the KGK, and to not just try to eliminate
them militarily." KGK stands for Kongra-Gele Kurdistan. "We certainly recognize
the pain the Turks have felt from the outlawed and terrorist activities of this
group, but we know that the long-term solution is some kind of an accommodation,
to scratch some of the itches of the KGK. And so we'll give them the help that
we can, but we're really strongly encouraging them to figure out a political
solution here," he added.
Gates: Bring moderates into political fold
US officials have long called for non-military measures to address the PKK
problem. The Turkish government has said it was planning such measures to help
the dissolution of the terrorist group but categorically rejects any prospects
for dialogue with the PKK.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who visited Ankara last week, said at a media
roundtable at the Pentagon on Wednesday that he and the Turkish officials he met
in Ankara "talked a great deal about the importance of accompanying the security
measures to go after the PKK guerrillas with efforts to try and address some of
the civilian concerns among the Kurdish population, where the PKK recruits
people. And I think that both President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan
have put forward proposals in the cultural, economic and political arenas to
begin doing that."
He was responding on Wednesday to a question, based on Odierno's remarks, over
whether the United States has a policy to have talks with the PKK. He said: "I
don't think that anybody -- certainly nobody I talk to -- was of a mind to have
any conversations with the PKK. I think that the real objective is to peel away
from the hard-core PKK, those who might be reconciled and brought back into the
political fold."
Despite growing calls for a "political solution" from the Pentagon, the State
Department has so far avoided making any statement. Responding to a question on
the issue, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said: "We continue to
urge Turkey and the government of Iraq to work with one another to confront the
challenge posed by the PKK. I know there are discussions that go on on a variety
of different levels on that, but certainly there's a lot more work to do before
we can end this threat to both Iraq and Turkey."
