Tuesday, October 23, 2007

PM Erdoğan to press Olmert to give up supporting Iraqi Kurds

Today's Zaman - Oct 23, 2007

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will bring the issue of Israeli experts' training of military forces in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq to the agenda in his talks with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Olmert, scheduled to take place today in the British capital.

A spokesperson for Olmert, who arrived in Paris on Sunday, announced on Monday that he will meet with Erdoğan today in London. Erdoğan departed yesterday from Ankara for London for an official visit during which he will also have talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Although Olmert's spokesperson said in Paris that talks between the Israeli and Turkish leaders would focus on Iran's nuclear ambitions and Israeli-Palestinian peace moves, a senior Turkish governmental official, speaking with Today's Zaman on Monday on condition of anonymity, said Erdoğan was carrying Turkish intelligence reports concerning Israeli activity in northern Iraq -- where Israeli experts have been training Iraqi Kurdish military forces -- to London. He will urge Olmert to put an end to these activities, at a time when Turkey intends to launch a military operation into northern Iraq to tackle the presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) there.

In November 2006, Pulitzer Prize-winning, leading American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that the PKK's Iranian offshoot, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), which has been behind a string of deadly attacks on security forces in northwestern Iran in recent months, received support from the US as well as Israel, which fears Iran's nuclear ambitions.

No comments: