A Kurdish rebel group is rejecting calls by Iraq’s president to stop fighting against Turkey and leave Iraqi territory.
Ahmed Deniz, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), said yesterday that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani doesn’t have the authority to make such statements. He says the PKK doesn’t “take orders from him.”
Deniz also warns Talabani, who is a Kurd, that such statements will lead to “grave consequences.” He did not elaborate.
His statements came the day after Talabani told reporters at a press conference with visiting Turkish President Abdullah Gul that it was in Iraq’s interest to remove PKK fighters. He also called on the rebels to lay down their weapons.
“Either they will lay down arms or they will leave our territory,” Talabani said.
JOINT STRUGGLE
For his part, Gul urged Baghdad to crack down on Kurdish rebels who stage cross-border raids into Turkish territory from sanctuaries in northern Iraq.
“The time has come to remove the element that is a source of trouble,” Gul said during a joint news conference with Talabani.
“We need to engage in a joint struggle to completely eradicate terrorism,” Gul said. “A comprehensive cooperation is required … There is no doubt that a greater role falls to the [place] where the terrorist organization’s leadership and camps are based.”
Meanwhile, 25 people were killed on Monday in Jalula, 120km northeast of Bahgdad, when a suicide bomber struck a tent filled with Kurdish funeral mourners, unleashing a huge fireball
At least 45 people were injured.
IN MOURNING
Karim Khudadat, whose father was being mourned, said he was receiving visitors when the bomber struck.
“I was with my relatives outside the tent receiving people who came to offer condolences when suddenly the explosion took place,” Khudadat said.
“Suddenly a huge flame engulfed the tent and I was wounded in my head and legs,” he said.
A series of high-profile bombings this month has raised concern that insurgents may be regrouping as the US begins to scale down combat operations and hand over security responsibility to the Iraqis ahead of a planned US withdrawal by the end of 2011.
The attack in Jalula was noteworthy because it points to rising tensions in the north between Kurds and Arabs over control of a swath of territory that the Kurds want to incorporate into their self-ruled region.
DISPUTED BORDER
Jalula lies on the disputed border between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq and was one of several towns where there were standoffs between Iraqi central government forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters last year.
US officials believe Kurdish-Arab tension is among the major flashpoint issues threatening Iraqi stability now that the threat posed by Sunni and Shiite insurgents has been diminished.
A Jalula resident who was wounded in Monday’s blast blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni Arab organization that typically carries out suicide bombings. He identified himself only by his nickname Abu Holman.
“Al-Qaeda is targeting the Kurds because it believes that we are involved in the political process and collaborating with the Americans,” Abu Holman said from his hospital bed. “There are still many al-Qaeda hotbeds in our area.”
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