US President George W. Bush, facing Turkish threats of a military incursion into Iraq to root out Kurdish rebels, assured Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan yesterday he is committed to helping to combat the militants.
Erdogan, who met Bush at the White House, has made clear that he wants concrete action to counter the Kurdish rebels who have been launching attacks on Turkey from Iraqi soil.
If Erdogan walks away from the meeting dissatisfied, there could be major repercussions for Bush's effort to stabilize Iraq where he has lately been touting progress.
Turkey, a NATO member with the alliance's second-biggest army, has sent up to 100,000 troops to the Iraqi border, backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft.
Ankara has said it may take cross-border action soon. The White House, fearing such action could destabilize the wider region, has been urging Turkey to refrain from a major operation in an area of Iraq that has so far escaped the violence plaguing other parts of the country.
Turkish officials have portrayed the meeting between Bush and Erdogan as a last chance effort to avert a military strike.
"Bush is going to have to offer something," said Bulent Aliriza, an expert on Turkey at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is an unusual situation. Most of the time, these meetings are very carefully choreographed ahead of time," he said.
But Aliriza said an attempt by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lay the groundwork for the meeting during a weekend trip to Istanbul appeared to do little to satisfy Ankara's demands for concrete steps.
Visiting Turkey for a conference on Iraqi security this weekend, Rice called the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants a "common enemy" but did not spell out what Washington might do to stop them from using Iraq as a base for attacks on Turkey, where they seek an independent Kurdish state.
The conference on Iraq in Istanbul also brought a vow from the Iraqi government to hunt down PKK militants responsible for raids into Turkey.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
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