Maliki promises Turkey cooperation on PKK rebels

ISTANBUL—Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said here Saturday that violence in his country is receding and promised to cooperate with Turkey against separatist Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.
He was speaking in Istanbul at a conference on Iraq attended by the country’s neighbours and major Western powers, which was overshadowed by Turkish threats to take military action against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases.
Maliki pledged his government’s cooperation against the rebels, who use bases in northern Iraq to attack Turkish targets across the border, but stopped short of promising the tough measures Ankara wants.
“We place great importance on our relations with our brother Turkey... We are aware of the scale of the threat” posed by the rebels, he said.
“We have made a definite decision to close down the offices of the PKK in Iraq. We are taking strong measures... We will watch the (PKK) members in the regions where they are based,” he said. Ankara has acknowledged that Maliki is trying to help Turkey against the PKK, but his embattled government has virtually no authority in northern Iraq, where the Iraqi Kurds run an autonomous administration.
Ankara accuses the Iraqi Kurdish leadership of harbouring and aiding the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community. It has urged the closure of the PKK camps and the arrest and extradition of its leaders.
Maliki told the conference that Iraq had overcome the threat of civil war, and said this would help regional stability. “Ethnic violence is decreasing... The civil war that Al-Qaeda wanted to spark has been prevented,” he said.
“Iraq has overcome the period of danger and is stronger and more experienced today. Our success will help not only us but also you,” he said, addressing Iraq’s neighbours. He renewed a call on neighbouring countries to act to prevent “the infilitration of terrorists.”
The United States accuses Iran-linked groups of funding, arming and training insurgents fighting US troops in Iraq, while it blames Syria for failing to stop foreign fighters slipping through its border to fight in Iraq. Tehran and Damascus deny the charges.
Maliki also pointed at economic progress in Iraq, saying that unemployment and inflation were decreasing. He issued a fresh appeal to neighbouring Arab countries to write off Iraqi debt dating back to the rule of Saddam Hussein, the bulk of it owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
“Writing off the debt will undoubtedly help our reconstruction efforts,” he said. Maliki also urged the international community to scale up the level of their diplomatic representation in Iraq and re-open their embassies.
“We expect that embassies in Bagdad will open in the shortest possible time,” he said. “We are grateful to those countries which have already done that.” The international conference here on Iraq was attended by foreign ministers and senior officials from Iraq’s neighbours, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8 countries.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon were among the participants.—Agencies