Gates To Tell Turks To Stop Attacks in Iraq
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ANKARA, Turkey — Defense Secretary Gates said yesterday that Turkey should remove its troops from northern Iraq in the next few days, sending a strong message that America’s patience is running out on the operation targeting Kurdish insurgents.
Mr. Gates said he would ask Turkish leaders in a series of meetings today to address some of the complaints of the Kurds, and move from combat to economic and political initiatives to solve differences with them.
“It’s very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave,” Mr. Gates said late yesterday from India before heading to Turkey. “They have to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty. I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months.” It was the first time that the Pentagon chief put any time limit on the Turkish incursion launched into Iraq last Thursday against separatist rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
The rebels are fighting for autonomy in the largely Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey, and have carried out attacks from northern Iraq. Overnight, Turkish troops killed more than 70 Kurdish rebels, the Turkish military said.
A Turkish official insisted that the aim of a military incursion into northern Iraq “is clear and limited” against Kurdish rebels and said no timetable will be set “until the terrorist bases are eliminated.” Ahmet Davutoglu, chief foreign policy adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, made the comments at a joint news conference in Baghdad yesterday with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari of Iraq. The Iraqi government demanded for the first time that Turkey immediately withdraw from northern Iraq, warning on Tuesday that it feared an ongoing incursion could lead to clashes with the official forces of the semiautonomous Kurdish region.
Mr. Erdogan had said the operation would only end “once its goal has been reached.”
Meanwhile, the chief of the Iraqi Journalists’ Union died yesterday of wounds suffered in an ambush described as a tragic example of the dangers still faced by the country’s journalists. He was 74.
Shihab al-Timimi had just left the union headquarters to head to a nearby art gallery in the Waziriya neighborhood of northeastern Baghdad when gunmen opened fire on his car on Saturday.
