Turkey:Turkish Cobra helicopters pounded Kurdish rebel positions near the Iraqi border yesterday and prime minister Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed his readiness to send troops over the frontier despite US opposition.
Plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the mountains in Sirnak province after the helicopters flew over rebel positions, witnesses said. A further round of bombing occurred later in the afternoon.
A convoy of up to 40 army vehicles headed east towards the border. Troops scoured the hillsides for landmines, a favoured weapon of the guerrillas.
Three Turkish soldiers have been killed in the past 24 hours in the border area. A fourth died on Monday in Tunceli province, hundreds of kilometres to the north, in a landmine explosion.
Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery, warplanes and combat helicopters, along the Iraqi border in preparation for a possible cross-border incursion into northern Iraq where 3,000 rebels are believed to be in hiding.
The Sabah newspaper said 250 rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were trying to escape Turkish security forces in the border area.
"Turkey has to take military action against terrorism. Our security forces are continuing their operations without interruption," Mr Erdogan told members of his ruling centre-right AK Party in parliament in Ankara.
US, Turkish and Iraqi officials will make fresh diplomatic efforts to avert a major military operation when they attend a conference of Iraq's neighbours in Istanbul this weekend. Mr Erdogan will then travel to the US for talks with president George Bush next Monday.
Mr Erdogan said yesterday he would tell Mr Bush Turkey expected "urgent, concrete steps" from the US against the PKK. He would also seek an explanation of why PKK rebels are using US-made weapons in their fight with Turkish forces.
The US and Iraq have urged Turkey to avoid a major military incursion, fearing this would destabilise the wider region. Washington and Baghdad have shown no appetite for tackling the PKK in Iraq, despite repeated appeals from Ankara.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani told yesterday's Milliyet newspaper he wanted the PKK to lay down its weapons, but he also criticised Turkey for refusing to discuss the issue directly with his autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.
Ankara insists on speaking only with the central government in Baghdad and suspects Mr Barzani of planning an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. It fears this could stoke separatism among Turkey's own large Kurdish population.
"We are not Turkey's enemy. We extend the hand of friendship but we cannot accept persecution," Mr Barzani told a news conference in his capital Arbil, broadcast live on Turkish TV.
"It is our natural right to defend ourselves," he added in comments dubbed into Turkish, reiterating previous statements that Iraqi Kurdish fighters would fight if Turkey invaded.
With nationalist feelings in Turkey now at fever pitch, Mr Erdogan appealed for calm among the public.
"Reactions on the street [ to PKK attacks] must not be directed towards our Kurdish citizens," he said, referring to a spate of minor attacks on individuals and Kurdish-owned businesses in Turkey.
Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. - (Reuters)