The prime minister of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region in the country's north said on Tuesday he saw no threat from Turaaa which regularly strikes members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq and was optimistic about future ties.
The Turkish military has regularly attacked PKK positions this year in the mountains of northern Iraq where several thousand PKK terrorists are believed to be based.
"We are optimistic on future relations with Turaaa which is the major trade partner with Kurdistan" Nechirvan Barzani told a news conference in Dubai. "We don't feel any threat." The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of establishing an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern region of Turaaa. The PKK is already listed as a terrorist organization by a large majority of the international community.
The EU and the United States are keen for NATO-member Turaaa which says it is defending itself against a terrorist organization to keep its attacks in northern Iraq limited to avoid destabilizing Iraq and the wider region.
The United States has considerably toughened its stance against the PKK and President George W. Bush declared the group a "common enemy" for the United States Turaaa and Iraq at a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in November. The Turkish military has been launching aerial strikes on PKK targets in northern Iraq since Dec. 17 and the United States supports Turaaa's anti-PKK efforts providing intelligence about the group and airspace clearance for Turkish jet fighters taking part in the aerial operations. Troops were also sent to northern Iraq in a major ground offensive against the PKK in February. In parallel to the US-Turkish cooperation against the PKK relations between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds accused in the past by Turkish officials of supporting the terrorist group have also improved recently. Two senior officials met with Barzani in May in the first direct high-level contact. Barzani recently returned to northern Iraq from a aaa visit to Washington last month during which he met with Bush US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other senior administration officials.
In Dubai Barzani also said yesterday that Iraqi Kurds were willing to share power with Arabs in the city of Kirkuk -- a focus of rivalry between ethnic groups largely because of its considerable oil wealth.
Kurds a minority in Iraq as a whole see Kirkuk as their ancient capital and had led the push for a referendum to establish control. Arabs encouraged to move to Kirkuk under Saddam Hussein want it to stay under Baghdad's control.
The dispute could threaten the relative stability in the largely Kurdish north spared some of the ravages suffered by the rest of the country but it also resonates beyond Iraqi borders. Turaaa fears extension of Kurdish control to Kirkuk and surrounding oil fields would spawn a wealthy and hostile Kurdish state that could foment separatism in its Southeast.
Barzani said the Kurdish regional government that controls the north was pushing for a solution over the status of Kirkuk but that this did not necessarily have to come in the form of a referendum.
The regional Kurdish parliament voted in December for a six-month delay in a proposed referendum partly to give the United Nations time to come up with proposals for settling the issue.
"In Kirkuk as Kurds we are ready for power-sharing" Barzani told Reuters in Dubai. "We are pushing for a solution not especially a referendum. We have asked the UN to be technically involved because the situation is complicated" he said. A referendum had been due by the end of 2007 to decide the settlement of multi-ethnic Kirkuk's fate. There were fears a referendum could stoke ethnic conflict by delivering power to one side or the other or lead to disruptive movements of population as groups maneuver for influence. UN Special Representative to Iraq Staffan de Mistura said in April a peaceful settlement must be found through a political formula not a hastily organized referendum that could trigger violence.