The US Ambassador to Ankara, Eric Edelman, spoke to Turkish daily Zaman regarding the Kurds in Southern Kurdistan

Zaman: There are concerns that the US have a hidden agenda when it comes to the Iraqi Kurds. How do you view about the issue?

The US Ambassador to Ankara, Eric Edelman: Well let me go to the other two questions first and then I'll come back to this. On the question of, again, all these rumors and speculations, the situation that has evolved in northern Iraq of course is a historical result of the outcome of the first Gulf war and then the cooperative policy that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Turkey had in trying for 10 years to contain the regime of Saddam Hussein. The groups, the Kurdish groups worked with the United States during the course of the military operations in the spring of 2003 but I think that from that historical fact, people here in Turkey have built a huge edifice of interpretation that I think is grossly out of kilter with reality. The reality, in my view, is that the United States and Turkey share a fundamental interest in seeing the outcome in Iraq as one in which there is a politically unified country with its territorial integrity intact. And that means that some particularly sensitive issues like the future of the city of Kirkuk have to be handled with great care. And that's a view I know that the Turkish government has and we share it and its for that reason that the transitional administrative law that was promulgated last spring was drafted in the way it was and created a special condition for the city of Kirkuk and didn't assign it to the Kurdish regional government and said that the process of property restitution there for those who were disadvantaged whether they were Kurds or Turkmen or Arabs, because lots of people were disadvantaged by Saddam's process of forced Arabization of the city. And that the way to solve that is not by force of arms, not by retribution, and certainly not by privileging any particular group, but rather to address those who have been disadvantaged through a transparent law based process of property restitution. And article 58 of the transitional administrative law, I believe, called for a property restitution committee which has been established. It's working, it's working very slowly, but that's the way the matter ought to be handled. We think that the elections in Kirkuk should go forward on January 30th just as they go forward in the rest of the country and that's a position that both we and the government of Turkey have in common. And Secretary Armitage, when he was in Salahadeen, over last weekend, spoke to Mr. Barzani, spoke by phone to Mr. Talabani who said exactly the same thing. So that's a position I think we share. I know that because we have not been able to take military action against the PKK that there are some people who continue to harbor some suspicions about what either the US relationship is with the PKK or what our ultimate intention is with regard to the areas of northern Iraq where there is a large Kurdish population. We'll have an opportunity next week to address those issues both when we have the trilateral US-Turkish-Iraqi talks on the PKK. We'll have a group of colleagues coming from Baghdad, both Iraqis and Americans, some American colleagues coming from Washington, and we'll sit down with our Turkish colleagues and we'll try to figure out what they way ahead is for dealing with the PKK. And of course General Abizaid will be here also and he will, as commander of cent-com, and I'm sure this subject will come up in his meetings as well, although the two are separate. They're not connected events, but obviously they will be opportunities to discuss that as well. I believe the United States and Turkey share a common interest and common goal although sometimes we may have some differences about the means to get to that goal.