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Kurds aiming for final agreement next week Ecevit says Turkey prepares its defenses Trouble brews between Kurds/Islamic rebels in Iraq KDP and PUK Set to Seal Agreement on Implementing Four-Year-Old Peace Deal Kurds tell of Iraqi war ignored by outside world Iraq's Kurds Fear Results of U.S. Attack on Saddam Former US diplomat visits Iraqi Kurdistan Turkey's Kurdish party sees no ban before polls Al-Qaeda Surrogate Islamic Group in Southern Kurdistan Destroys Sufi Shrines Two Kurdish guerrillas killed in Southern Kurdistan Police Smash Immigrant Smuggling Ring Washington will not lay the groundwork for a "provisional government" Iraqi Kurds Fear Islamic Militant Group Attack by Islamist Radicals in Kurdistan Brings Kurdish Factions Closer Sweden Arrests Kurd in Immigrant "Honor Killing" Turkey set for November polls, EU reforms in doubt
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Kurdish group denies
getting Baghdad's help to fight al-Qaeda terrorists
DUBAI, Sept 14 (AFP) One of the two main Kurdish groups controlling northern Iraq denied on Saturday having received weapons from Baghdad to fight militants thought to be linked to the al-Qaeda terror network. "These are Tareq Aziz's dreams. Of course it's not true" that the government of President Saddam Hussein helped the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) fight Islamist radicals in the part of the Kurdish enclave it controls, the PUK's London representative Latif Rashid told AFP by telephone. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said Friday that Baghdad, far from "supporting terrorism" as President George W. Bush has claimed, had given PUK chief Jalal Talabani weapons to fight the militants linked to Al-Qaeda. Whatever "remnants" of Al-Qaeda are in Iraq can be found in the province of Suleimaniya, which is held by the PUK and outside Baghdad's control, Aziz told Dubai-based Saudi-owned MBC television. "Why didn't US officials question Talabani about the Islamist radicals when he recently met them in Washington?" Aziz asked. The PUK leader, whose faction shares control of the Western-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), had sought Baghdad's help to combat the al-Qaeda extremists and "we gave him weapons and equipment," Aziz added. "Such statements are not surprising from a government who accused President Bush of coming up with a series of lies and fabrications" in his speech to the UN General Assembly Thursday, the PUK's Rashid said. The PUK has clashed in recent months with Islamist extremists in the part of Iraqi Kurdistan it controls, pushing them back to Biara, which borders Iran. Rashid told AFP in May that the extremists were affiliated with "Ansar al-Islam" (Supporters of Islam), which comprises a number of groupings, including 200 to 300 members of the so-called Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam). The fundamentalists are suspected of being responsible for a series of recent incidents, including bomb blasts, in the Kurdish enclave, which has been off limits to the Baghdad government since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Rashid said Saturday that while Ansar al-Islam included Arab former Iraqi intelligence operatives, the PUK did not know if these elements still had links with Iraqi intelligence. He was referring to reports that the leader of Ansar al-Islam, who goes by the name of Mullah Krekar, was suspected by the United States of acting as a go-between for al-Qaeda and the Baghdad regime. Dutch authorities, acting on a tipoff from a foreign secret service, arrested Krekar on Thursday while he was transiting Amsterdam on his way from Tehran to Oslo. A spokesman for the Dutch justice ministry told AFP in The Hague Saturday that "high-level discussions" were under way on the next step after Krekar's arrest. Krekar, 46, whose real name is believed to be Fateh Najmeddin Faraj, has residency rights in Norway. The PUK's Rashid said Krekar had been in northern Iraq for a long period until some two months ago, but he could not provide more details. Iran had denied entry to the Kurdish leader, an official source in Tehran told AFP Saturday.
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