KurdistanObserver.com

Iranian Ambassador: US Looking To Carve Kurdish State From Turkey, Iran And Syria

ISTANBUL: AP- April 5, 2006- The Iranian ambassador to Ankara urged Turkey, Iran and Syria to form a joint policy on the Kurdish issue, saying in an interview published on Tuesday that if they did not, “the US will carve pieces from us for a Kurdish state.”

Turkey, Syria and Iran share borders and have large Kurdish populations that separatist militants would like to see as part of an independent Kurdish state. Turkey in particular fears such a scenario, and has been roiled in the past week by anti-state Kurdish riots that have left 15 dead and hundreds injured.

The remarks by Ambassador Firouz Dowlatabadi were published in an interview with Turkey’s Milliyet daily and confirmed by the Iranian Embassy in Ankara. “Turkey, Iran and Syria need to form a joint policy on the Kurd and Iraq issues. If there is a void between Turkey, Iran and Syria on this subject, the US will enter the void and fill the space,” he said. “The US will carve pieces out of us for a Kurdish state.”

Dowlatabadi said the United States was trying to create friction between Iran and Turkey, despite what he called their more than 1,100-year-old friendship, because the US preferred the region to be full of small ethnic states that it could control. “The US is trying to prevent the development and strengthening of relations between Turkey and Iran. It’s trying to bring the two countries into conflict,” he said.

US officials, including the chief US representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency, have called on Turkey to help persuade Iran to abandon any ambitions of developing nuclear weapons. Iran denies that it has such ambitions.

Dowlatabadi said the United States, which recently announced publicly that it was pouring money into supporting regime change in Iran, was following the same principles it was after the Iranian Revolution, which kicked out the US-backed shah and led to the establishment of a conservative Islamic republic.

But, Dowlatabadi said, “the US is in a much weaker position than it was in the first years of the revolution. As for Iran, it’s much more powerful.”