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Turkey's Gul on landmark Iraq visit
2009-03-23
BAGHDAD (AFP) - President Abdullah Gul arrived in Iraq on Monday on the first visit by a Turkish head of state in three decades for talks set to focus on the thorny issue of Kurdish rebels. "Gul will discuss with President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki the PKK issue, water and economic relations," Al-Iraqiya state television said. He is the first Turkish head of state to visit in 33 years, after Fahri Koruturk made the trip in 1976 when Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was president of Iraq. Gul will also meet the prime minister of the Kurdish autonomous region, an official told AFP. Falah Mustafa, a foreign relations official with the Kurdistan regional government, said its prime minister Nechirvan Barzani would meet Gul in Baghdad. "The visit is a positive step for the development of relations between Turkey and the Kurdistan region within the framework of Iraq," Mustafa told AFP. Talabani, himself a Kurd, made his first visit to Turkey as head of state a year ago, when he and Gul pledged to cooperate in attempts to oust rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who have set up bases in northern Iraq. Ankara wants close ties and economic cooperation with Baghdad, but the safe haven the PKK enjoys in the autonomous Kurdish-run north of Iraq has long been a bone of contention between the two countries. Turkey has often accused the Iraqi Kurds, who run an autonomous administration in northern Iraq, of tolerating and even aiding the rebels. But hopes of better cooperation improved after Iraq, Turkey and the United States agreed in November to form a joint committee to work on the problem. During a visit to Ankara in December, Maliki pledged to increase cooperation to root out the rebels. In Istanbul last week Talabani urged Turkey to consider an amnesty for the rebels to consolidate measures broadening Kurdish cultural freedoms and boost the prospect of lasting peace. He also said the Kurdish rebels are expected to heed an appeal expected next month by Kurdish political groups from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Europe to lay down their arms. "I believe the PKK will accept the wish of all Kurdish parties, laying down its arms and putting an end to violent action," Talabani told Turkey's Sabah newspaper. The PKK's expected move would not mean only a ceasefire but "a decision in principle to end the so-called armed revolution," he said. The Kurdish groups are due to gather in late April or May, probably in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil. The PKK, labelled a terrorist group by much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives. Turkey says thousands of PKK militants use the mountains of northern Iraq as a springboard to attack Turkish territory. The Turkish army has been targeting rebel bases in Iraq under a parliamentary authorisation for cross-border military action, which was first approved in 2007 and renewed for another year in October. Gul's talks are also likely to discuss the controversial issue of oil-rich Kirkuk, an ethnically divided city 255 kilometres (160 miles) north of Baghdad where tensions between Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen residents run deep. Turkmen, an ethnic group comprising about 600,000 people, are concentrated around Kirkuk. Kurds have demanded that the city be added to their autonomous region in Iraq's north, but Turkey opposes this. Ali Hashim Oglo, spokesman for the Iraqi Turkmen Front, described Gul's visit as "a historic day which will discuss economic cooperation, water, and issues regarding the PKK and Kirkuk."
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