Turkey sanctions target rebels

Ankara: Turkey said yesterday planned economic sanctions would only target outlawed Kurdish militants and groups providing them with support in northern Iraq.

Officials declined to say what the new measures would include but made clear they would spare Turks and Iraqis not connected to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been launching attacks on Turkey from across the border.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the measures, agreed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, were not yet in force and he denied a television report that Turkey had closed its airspace to flights to and from northern Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki will attend a conference on Iraq in Istanbul beginning today amid a crisis in ties between Baghdad and Ankara over Kurdish rebels holed up in northern Iraq.

"Mr Al Maliki will be in Istanbul Friday for the conference," an Iraqi diplomat said.

The foreign ministers of Iraq and its neighbours, plus the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8, will be at the meeting tonight and tomorrow.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who will also attend the Istanbul meeting, was to arrive in Ankara last night for talks with his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan, an Iranian diplomat said.

Turkey has sent 100,000 troops to the Iraqi border, backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft, ready for a possible military incursion into northern Iraq against PKK militants there.

Diplomats say Turkey may hold fire on both sanctions and major military action for now to see whether talks in Ankara today with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and further discussions between Erdogan and US President George W. Bush next Monday in Washington yield any results.

"When we talk of economic sanctions, we don't mean to cause difficulty to people living in Turkey and Iraq," Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told a news conference, striking a relatively mild tone after the tough rhetoric of recent days.

"We are targeting the economic sources of the terrorist organisation and those elements providing support to the terrorist organisation," he added.

Nato-member Turkey knows economic sanctions could end up hurting its own economy as much as that of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which is run by Masoud Barzani.

Turkey accuses Barzani and his administration of providing shelter and support to an estimated 3,000 PKK rebels. Barzani denies the charges but says he will not turn over any Kurd to Turkish authorities.

Rice holds talks with Erdogan and other top officials in the Turkish capital before heading to Istanbul for a meeting of foreign ministers from Iraq's neighbours and major powers that is sure to be dominated by tensions between Ankara and Baghdad.

Rice has promised unspecified "concrete action" and is prodding Iraq's government, particularly the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq, to rein in the PKK by closing its bases and arresting leaders.

The spying game
US admits providing intelligence to Ankara

The US acknowledged on Wednesday it has undertaken military moves against Kurdish rebels in Iraq after asserting for weeks that their strikes in Turkey were a diplomatic matter.

Defence Department officials are now starting to say publicly that the US is flying manned spy planes over the border area, providing Turkey with more intelligence information, and that there are standing orders for American forces to capture rebels they find.

Only last Friday, the US commander in northern Iraq, Maj Gen Benjamin Mixon, said he planned to do 'absolutely nothing' to counter Kurdish rebels operating from the region.

But the top American commander in Iraq, in comments that appeared aimed at allaying Turkish frustration over the matter, said Sunday the US military was playing a role in trying to defuse tensions.

Gen David Petraeus declined to elaborate. Since then, however, Pentagon officials have detailed a number of examples to undermine the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, holed up in bases in northern Iraq.

"We are assisting the Turks in their efforts to combat the PKK by supplying them with intelligence, lots of intelligence," Defence Department press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

- AP