Turkish warplanes bomb Kurd rebels

ANKARA—Turkish warplanes reportedly bombed Kurdish rebel targets along the Iraqi border on Wednesday as government and military leaders met to consider whether to launch operations across the frontier.
Fighter jets bombed and destroyed several Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) mountain positions in Sirnak, Hakkari, Siirt and Van provinces which are on the borders with Iraq and Iran, the semi-official Anatolia news agency said.
Helicopter gunships also took part in the raids that followed the killing of 12 soldiers in a PKK ambush near the Iraqi border on Sunday. The PKK said it captured eight soldiers in the clashes.
Another operation against the PKK, backed by air cover, was underway in the eastern province of Tunceli, Anatolia said, adding that suspected PKK militants detonated two remote-control bombs as soldiers combed a rural area for landmines.
The military said 34 PKK militants had been killed in operations since Sunday’s attack, which increased pressure on Ankara for a military incursion into northern Iraq, where the rebels take refuge.
The National Security Council met amid new international appeals for restraint and signs that Baghdad might hand some rebels over to prevent a Turkish military strike. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan that he “did not exclude the possibility” of extraditing separatist fighters when the two met in Baghdad on Tuesday, a Turkish government source said
Babacan said Iraq should hand over about 100 PKK members whose names figured on a list sent to Baghdad earlier this year, added the source. The issue will be taken up during talks in Ankara on Thursday with an Iraqi security delegation.
President Abdullah Gul led the National Security Council meeting of top military officers and senior ministers to discuss options for tackling the PKK, which has been fighting for self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984.
Babacan said Ankara would not flinch from military action if the Iraq and the United States did not clamp down on PKK bases in northern Iraq. Last week, the Turkish parliament authorised the government to order cross-border military strikes against the separatist camps.
The US administration expressed worries that renewed fighting could lead to “escalating tensions” between Turkey and Iraq. “We are concerned about the continuing skirmishes that are happening up there, and terrorist attacks that are being launched by the PKK against the Turks,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
“We continue to urge both sides to exercise restraint.” The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, called on Ankara to refrain from unilateral military action and give diplomacy a chance.
“Turkey should think twice before launching a military intervention,” Manuel Lobo Antunes, the European Affairs Minister of Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Turkey has long demanded that Iraq prevent the PKK from using its territory, cut off logistical support and hand over rebel leaders to Turkey.
A top US official said Wednesday that the Kurdish administration in Iraq’s autonomous north must to do more to weed out PKK rebels. “It is in the interests of the Kurdish residents of Iraq that these terrorist attacks stop and that Turkey and Iraq become good neighbours,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said in Berlin.
Massud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan, on Wednesday urged the PKK to end its armed struggle.—Agencies