By Xinhua
Baghdad : A delegation of senior officials from the Turkish foreign ministry arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday to discuss the tension on the Iraqi-Turkish border, an Iraqi foreign ministry official said.
“I can confirm that the Turkish delegation of senior officials of the Turkish Foreign Ministry is in Baghdad,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
“The Turkish delegation is now holding a meeting with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and a group of his senior ministry officials,” the source said.
The meeting came a day after the Iraqi government condemned the Turkish incursion in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and demanded an immediate withdrawal of the Turkish troops from northern Iraq.
“The Iraqi cabinet expressed its rejection and condemnation for the Turkish army incursion,” Ali al-Dabbagh, the government spokesman, said in a televised statement.
Al-Dabbagh said that the cabinet considered the Turkish military action as a “violation to Iraqi sovereignty” and called on Turkey to withdraw its troops immediately.
The cabinet also warned Turkey that “unilateral military action is not acceptable and threatens the friendly relations between the two countries.”
On Friday, Turkey said that 10,000 of its troops were taking part in the cross-border offensive, which follows periodic air raids on suspected hideouts of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters in northern Iraq.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast of the country. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.
The Turkish military was authorized by the parliament last November to enter into northern Iraq to pursue PKK members.
But such a move has been rare as the U.S. – Turkey’s major ally- is worried about that a major incursion would destabilize the Kurdish region, which has been spared of the violence in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion broke out in 2003.