In unusual criticism, US officials on Tuesday upbraided Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq for failing to curb the Kurdish guerrillas who operate unchecked in the autonomous region and use it as a safe haven for ambushes inside Turkey.
Those raids, which the Turkish authorities say have killed at least 42 people in the past month, have led the Turks to threaten an invasion into Iraq. Turkish armored vehicles continued to rumble into position on Tuesday along the mountainous border.
Until now, US officials have focused their public comments on delicately warning the Turks not to invade Iraq. But that changed on Tuesday when the State Department's senior Iraq adviser, David Satterfield, laid some blame at the door of Kurdish leaders, who have been the staunchest supporters of the US military occupation of Iraq.
"We are not pleased with the lack of action," Satterfield told reporters in Washington. He did not call on Kurdish leaders to take direct military action against the guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. But he said they must take responsibility for dealing with the guerrilla threat.
While the willingness of Kurdish leaders to crack down on fellow Kurds remained unclear, Iraqi leaders in Baghdad promised to shut down the offices of the guerrilla group, known as the PKK. The Iraqi central government, however, has little power over the affairs of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki condemned the PKK as a "bad terrorist organization" and vowed to do whatever was necessary to curb attacks. "We have made a decision to shut down their offices and not allow them to operate in Iraq territory," he said.
That "is a start," a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said in Washington.
PROMISES
The Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself a powerful Kurdish politician, promised his Turkish counterpart at a meeting in Baghdad that Iraqi officials would act to sharply limit the guerrillas' movements and their ability to obtain weapons, food and supplies.
"The Iraqi government will actively help Turkey overcome this menace," Zebari said after meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, Ali Babacan.
It was not clear whether al-Maliki's pledge to shut down the PKK was related to a list of political demands Babacan gave to the Iraqi government to avert Turkish military action.
According to the state-run Anatolian News Agency, Turkey asked Iraq to shut down hide-outs of Kurdish militants, to extradite the group's leaders and to restrict their movement by preventing logistical support from reaching them.
Turkey has made demands before, but not in such detail or as part of a political negotiation, and Kurdish leaders have always dismissed them as unrealistic. The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, who is also a Kurd, said on Sunday that the Kurdish regional government would not hand over any Kurd to Turkey -- "even a Kurdish cat" -- and that Turkey's demand for extradition of guerrilla leaders was unattainable.
Turkish leaders continued to send a double message on Tuesday, with Turkish officials visiting two countries and pressing the threat of military action but promising to first exhaust diplomatic efforts.
While Zebari promised that a senior Iraqi delegation would quickly be dispatched to Ankara, Babacan said the Iraqi officials should not even get on the plane unless they were bearing "tangible suggestions" for solving the crisis.
GUNFIRE
Meanwhile, gunfire from a US helicopter killed 11 people, including women and children, after it came under fire north of Baghdad on Tuesday, according to a statement by the military. The episode was the second this week in which multiple Iraqi deaths resulted from a US combat action.
The Iraqi police and witnesses put the toll higher, at 16 dead, and recounted a confusing scene in which local people were trying to help a wounded man who was apparently an insurgent as a US helicopter buzzed overhead.
According to Mohanad Hamid Muhsin, a 14-year-old who was wounded in the leg, the insurgent fired a machine gun at a helicopter around sunrise in a rural area near the city of Tikrit. The helicopter unleashed a barrage of gunfire in return, hitting the man who had fired the machine gun, he said.
"The locals went to check if he was dead and gathered around him," Mohanad said of the insurgent, "but the helicopter opened fire again and killed some of the locals and wounded others." When another group tried to carry the wounded and dead to houses to provide first aid, Mohanad said, the helicopter shot at four houses, killing and wounding more people.
In its statement, the US military said that "a known member of an IED cell was among the 11 killed during the multiple engagements," using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.
The statement said an additional four "military-age males" were among the dead and said that five women and one child were also killed. The statement said the helicopter had been fired at from a house.
"I lost two of my brothers and my sister, who was a college student," Mohanad said in a telephone interview from a hospital in Tikrit where the wounded were taken.
A local police official, meanwhile, said that 16 people, including six women and three children, were killed and that an additional 14 were wounded.
PARADE
Also on Tuesday, Sunni tribal sheiks who have allied with the US hosted an improbable military parade, with a band and soldiers in spit-shined boots, down a main street in the city of Ramadi in Anbar Province, though with an extensive US military presence in the area.
The parade, which was led by children waving flowers and Iraqi flags, would have been unthinkable amid the insurgent violence in Ramadi a year ago, US commanders who attended said.
The sheiks' movement, the Anbar Awakening Council, has used tribal ties to draw former insurgents into the government police force, while helping US soldiers identify remaining militants. In Ramadi, US patrols have not been targeted in the city since May, US commanders said.
The parade was a response to one held last year in Ramadi by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an insurgent group linked to al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that US intelligence officials say has foreign leadership.
The parade on Tuesday formally commemorated the end of the 40-day period of mourning after the death of Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, the leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, who was killed shortly after meeting President Bush in Anbar in September. His brother, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, took over as leader of the group.
Sheik Abu Risha responded on Tuesday to an audiotape of the Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, that was broadcast on al-Jazeera on Monday. The tape admonished Sunni Muslims in Iraq for allowing divisions within their ranks in the struggle against the US, according to SITE, a group that monitors extremist Islamic groups.
"We invite bin Laden to tell us who his people are," Abu Risha said. "Let them come out, and we will fight them. Here I am. I am willing to lead the fight."
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