ANKARA (Agencies)
Turkey is "in the process of implementing" a cross-border operation against Kurdish guerrillas who use northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks, a senior Turkish general said, but an Iraqi senior officer denied the statement.
There were no immediate signs of increased military activity along Turkey's mountainous border with Iraq on Thursday evening, Reuters reporters in the region said, suggesting any offensive may still be in the preparatory stages.
"We are in the process of implementing the cross-border operation," General Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces and the second most powerful man in the armed forces, told reporters at a diplomatic reception.
Basbug did not spell out exactly what he meant. But the military has for weeks been boosting its presence along the border. Analysts also say authorities have stepped up the rhetoric to put pressure U.S. and Iraqi authorities to move against the rebels.
A senior Iraqi border guards officer, however, said there were no signs that Turkey had launched a cross-border operation into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels based there.
"There has been no Turkish incursion into Iraq, although there are many Turkish troops massing on the Turkish side of the border," the officer, who declined to be identified, told
Reuters.
Turkey has amassed as many as 100,000 troops, backed by warplanes, helicopters and tanks, for a possible cross-border incursion to root out the separatist rebels, blamed by Ankara for a series of attacks on its security personnel.
One senior U.S. military official in Baghdad said he was not immediately aware of any Turkish action. Iraqi government officials could not be reached for comment.
On Tuesday security sources said Turkey had sent hundreds of Special Forces to the border to bolster its forces there.
Basbug's comments followed a reaffirmation by the government this week that Turkey was ready to carry out an offensive against some 3,000 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants based in the mountains of northern Iraq.
The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the United
States, Turkey and the European Union, took up arms in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. |
