PJAK admits to having US relations

Kurdish rebels holding a US flag

Press TV News - Oct 24, 2007

A member of PJAK terrorist group has admitted to the organization's relations with the US government, New York Times reported.

Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group's leadership, said Tuesday that there had been 'normal dialogue' with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards confirmed the group's officials had met with Americans in Kirkuk last year, the Times reported.

Gabar, who was shown lying on a slab of rock with 27 other guerillas on top of a 3,000m mountain near Iran borders where Iranian military vehicles were at range, also adds that there are diplomatic relations and movements between US government and the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, otherwise known as PJAK.

Iranian officials have accused the US of supplying the terrorists and using them in a proxy war against their country, a claim that Washington denies.

However Iran isn't the only country that accuses the US of aiding the PKK and other Kurdish separatists. The Turkish government has basically said the same thing. The suspicions grew even stronger when Turkish soldiers found American-made weapons lying next to killed PKK terrorists. The Iranians believe that the US is aiding Kurdish terrorists for several reasons one of them is because Kurdish leaders themselves admit they regularly have "direct or indirect discussions" with US officials.

The PJAK and the PKK appear to be mostly one and the same organization, both fighting to win autonomy for Kurds in Iran and Turkey and sharing leadership, logistics and allegiance to Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader in jail in Turkey.

Differentiating between the two, however, is politically smart for the US because the PKK "is fighting Turkey, an important American ally, while the PJAK is not labeled as such because it is fighting Iran."

The leader of the PJAK, Rahman Haj-Ahmad, an off-shoot of a terrorist group, was allowed to visit Washington last summer.