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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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Iraqi Kurdish group to exchange visits with Turkey to ease war of wordsARBIL, (Southern Kurdistan) Sept 6 (AFP) A "high-level" Turkish delegation will visit northern Iraq soon and a top official from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) will later travel to Ankara in an effort to ease tensions that recently flared into a war of words, a KDP source said Friday. The Turkish team will come "within days", and Nechirvan Barzani, top aide to KDP chief Massoud Barzani, will go to Ankara "toward the end of the month," the KDP official, who requested anonymity, told AFP in Arbil, capital of the part of northern Iraq under KDP control. He said Ankara had recently replaced the Turkish official in charge of relations with the KDP, who had not played a "positive" role, and his successor had visited northern Iraq twice at the end of August, "accompanied by US (officials), to defuse tensions." The KDP source gave no further details on the official allegedly sacked by Ankara or his successor. A senior KDP official had also said after visiting Ankara last week that his group and Turkey intended to improve ties. But on Friday, the deputy speaker of the Turkish parliament suggested that Ankara should declare autonomy for the Turkmens, a group of Turkic origin, in northern Iraq in response to what he said were Iraqi Kurdish leaders' calls for independence. Murat Sokmenoglu, a member of the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), made the suggestion in response to reported remarks by KDP chief Barzani to a German newspaper. According to Turkey's Anatolia news agency, Barzani said in the interview that they would "never allow Turks to take over even a millimeter of our soil", should Turkey move in to destroy a possible Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Sokmenoglu criticized Barzani as an "imprudent clan leader" and claimed that northern Iraqi Kurds had already set up a de facto state in the region which has been outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf War. "In view of these facts, has not the time come for Ankara to announce an autonomous Turkmen region" which also includes the oil-rich Kirkuk area, currently under Baghdad's control, he said in his statement, carried by Anatolia. Turkey is adamantly opposed to an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, fearing such a move would fan separatist sentiment among its own Kurdish population in adjacent southeast Turkey. Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu warned on Sunday that Ankara would take military action along its border with Iraq if Kurdish groups there moved toward independence after any US strike. The KDP shares
control of northern Iraq with a rival faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) led by Jalal Talabani.
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