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Iraqi Kurds vow to fight off Turkish forces

Iraq's Kurdish region vowed on Friday to fight off any attack as Washington said it was willing to help Baghdad crack down on rebels there to stave off a threatened Turkish incursion.

Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani issued a strongly worded statement hours after US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates hinted that US and Iraqi forces were ready to get involved if needed.

"We frankly say to all parties: if they attack the region or Kurdistan experiment under whatever pretext, we will be completely ready to defend our democratic experiment and the dignity of our people and the sanctity of our homeland," Barzani said.

But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan upped the ante, just days after parliament authorized a military incursion into Iraq.

"What would satisfy us is the closure of all the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] camps, including their training camps and the handover of their terrorist leaders," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

The prime minister said the camps should be "cleaned up once and for all."

Barzani said Iraqi Kurds were not to blame for the trouble between Turkey and the PKK rebels and reiterated a call for Ankara to hold direct negotiations with his autonomous government in Arbil.

But Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek rejected direct talks with the Kurdish regional authorities and said the Turks would deal only with the central government in Baghdad.

"We don't talk to Iraqi Kurdish groups. Our interlocutor is the Iraqi government in Baghdad and we discuss whatever we want to discuss with its representatives," he told the English-language daily Today's Zaman in Ankara.

Turkey says the PKK rebels enjoy free movement in Iraq's Kurdish north and are tolerated or even actively supported by the regional political leaders, something they have repeatedly denied.

"The Kurdish region strongly rejects the charges of helping the PKK," Barzani said in his statement.

"We are astonished by this tension during the past few days and the Turkish stance in crossing Kurdistan's borders under the pretext of striking at the PKK," he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed that he will bring an end to the presence inside Iraq of the PKK, which he has labeled "terrorists" several times in recent days.

In the latest bout of violence around the northern oil city of Kirkuk, insurgents blew up an oil pipeline, battled a convoy carrying bodyguards of a deputy prime minister and ambushed a police chief, Iraqi officials said on Friday.

The violence underscored the continued instability of the area surrounding Kirkuk, where some Sunni insurgents fled this year from strongholds in Baghdad and Baqubah after increased US troop deployments in central Iraq.
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