By Xinhua
Baghdad : Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki telephoned his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, reiterating Iraq’s commitment to striking Kurdish rebels who are using northern Iraq as a launch pad against Ankara.
His call came hours before the Turkish parliament’s sanction of a cross-border military action motion by the government.
Maliki said that he understood Turkey’s concerns about the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) activities and reiterated his government’s keenness to prevent Kurdish separatists’ operations from being launched from Iraqi territories, according to the Iraqi national TV station.
Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional government expressed regret about Turkish parliament’s decision, saying that Turkey’s planned military operation would lead to destabilization in the region, and calling for finding a solution through dialogue.
On Tuesday, Maliki said his government would send a high-level political and security team to Turkey to discuss the border tensions between the two nations.
The Turkish parliament passed late Wednesday the motion by 507votes to 19, authorizing the government to carry out incursion of Iraq for pounding the estimated 3,000 PKK fighters. But Erdogan has said the passage does not mean immediate military incursion.
Meanwhile, the United States has repeatedly voiced opposition to Turkey’s action, fearing that it would devastate the only peaceful region of the violence-torn Iraq.
The PKK has increased its attacks on government troops in southeastern Turkey, which led to rising Turkish demands for an incursion into northern Iraq to crush the rebels based there.
The group, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.