Kurdistan's Position.

The Erbil-based Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) - controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Ma'soud Barzani, who is president of Kurdistan, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, who is president of Iraq - has been resisting repeated requests by Ankara for the Baghdad government to work on evicting the PKK from northern Iraq. It says Ankara must first recognise the KRG before the local government takes action against the PKK.

Gulf News on Oct. 16 quoted KRG Minister Muhammad Ehsan as saying: "The government of Kurdistan firmly opposes [Ankara's demand for] sending Iraqi forces from Baghdad to borders with Turkey as the Turkish government wants. This is an internal issue and concerning the sovereignty of Iraq, and only the Iraqi government and its Kurdish regional counterpart will handle it". Gulf News quoted "sources in the Iraqi army as saying a recent meeting between Iraqi Defence Minister Abdul-Qader Muhammad Jasem and the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad focused on Ankara's request of sending Iraqi troops to the border to take the place of Kurdish Peshmerga elements accused by Ankara of sympathising with the PKK.

Ehsan said the government in Erbil supported proposals for talks between Turkey and the PKK leadership, adding: "Dialogue is the right way to solve the PKK problem and not by using excessive military power". Ehsan said Ankara had informed the US and Baghdad it would not accept any representatives of the KRG to attend Turkish-Iraqi talks.

Gulf News quoted Aaron Kamiran, an Iraqi political analyst, as saying: "I believe the goal of the Turkish government is to escalate the situation on the Iraqi border under the pretext of eliminating the hostile activities by PKK elements. The goal is political because launching a Turkish military operation in the region would not achieve any results because of the difficult and mountainous terrain. Hence the Turks want to send Iraqi and non-Kurdish troops to the border and they will raise problems between Erbil and Baghdad, especially with Erbil's insistence on rejecting the Turkish proposal. What is important for Turks is to make sure that Iraqi Kurdistan...will not be an independent entity or a confederate state in the future. Besides, the non-Kurdish forces in the region may pose a guarantee for Turkey in this region, especially since normalization... in Kirkuk is implemented hastily".