WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush told Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan that the United States wants to deal more aggressively with cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the White House said on Tuesday. "We have talked about establishing a trilateral framework between the United States, Iraq and Turkey to address this issue," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said after Bush met Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "We have already identified some steps that can be taken and that the Iraqis are going to take," he told reporters.
| Sounds good. Whacking the PKK perhaps isn't the first priority for the Iraqi government, but it should be on the list. |
Diplomats say Turkey is frustrated that the United States accepts Israel's right to launch attacks against its enemies over the border in Lebanon while remaining opposed to Ankara taking unilateral action against the PKK in Iraq. The United States, like Turkey and the European Union, views the PKK as a terrorist organization but says broader security problems in Iraq prevent the kind of full-scale military crackdown on the group that Ankara demands.