Turkey hunts PKK rebels after Iraqi talks fail

SIRNAK, Turkey, Oct 27 (Reuters) Turkish military planes today scoured the Iraqi border for Kurdish rebel camps army sources said, after diplomatic talks in Ankara to avert a major cross-border operation into northern Iraq failed.

Turkish-Iraqi talks collapsed late yesterday after Ankara rejected proposals by Iraqi Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim for tackling Kurdish guerrillas based in northern Iraq as insufficient. The delegation left today.

Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by fighter jets, helicopter gunships, tanks, and mortars, on the frontier before a possible offensive against about 3,000 rebels using Iraq as a base from which to carry out deadly attacks in Turkey.

The United States, which was also represented at the talks, opposes a major incursion, fearing it could destabilise the relatively peaceful north of Iraq and the wider region.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms against Turkey in 1984, aiming to create an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

In recent years the PKK has pushed for greater cultural and political rights.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan today took a swipe at western countries for not helping Turkey fight the PKK, criticising what he called an approach of ''your terrorist is good, my terrorist is bad''.

''We want to see our western friends by our side in our fight against terror,'' he told a conference in Istanbul. ''Those who overlook terrorism are in cooperation with terrorism.'' ERDOGAN-BUSH MEETING Erdogan played down comments by Turkey's top general that the army was waiting for him to meet US President George W Bush in Washington on November 5 before launching a major incursion.

US-Turkish ties have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks.

General Yasar Buyukanit was quoted yesterday by Turkish media as saying the meeting was very important and NATO's second largest army would hold off until Erdogan returned.

Senior Turkish diplomats say Erdogan has given Washington and Baghdad a limited time to show concrete results or steps to be taken against the PKK. The meeting in Washington will be the last chance, they told Reuters.

Any major offensive, expected to involve ground and air forces, would first have to be approved by the government.

''I don't know what will happen before the American trip,'' Erdogan said late yesterday. ''We are in a sensitive state all the time.'' Today Buyukanit, in a speech to mark Monday's Republic Day, said the army would fight until it had destroyed the PKK.

''We feel the pain of our martyred heroes deeply. But that pain increases our determination to fight,'' the text of his speech read. ''Those who make us suffer cannot even imagine the suffering we will inflict on them; on this we are determined.'' Erdogan, under growing public pressure, has repeatedly said Turkey will not tolerate any more attacks by the PKK, which has killed about 40 people in the last month.

Army sources today told Reuters that military planes were making reconnaissance flights along the mountainous border to photograph PKK camps in northern Iraq. Helicopters were patrolling villages and soldiers sweeping for mines.

In the southeastern city of Sirnak about 1,000 people today demonstrated against the PKK, which in its latest major attack killed 12 soldiers and said it took eight prisoner. Security was tight, with sharpshooters on rooftops and village guard militiamen present.

''For every 12 martyrs, 12,000 more Turkish martyrs are born,'' chanted protesters, who came from all over the province.

The military has recently carried out as many as 24 limited operations into northern Iraq against the PKK but no major land incursion, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said yesterday.

Turkish helicopter gunships and F-16 jets have attacked PKK positions inside Iraq in recent days.

Analysts question whether a major military assault into northern Iraq would be successful, as past ones have failed to dislodge the PKK, whose members are also in Turkey.

Ankara had asked Iraq to hand over PKK members, but the central government has little control over semi-autonomous northern Iraq, run by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The KRG, run by Masoud Barzani, says it has no control over the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation in the United States, Turkey and the European Union.

Barzani has vowed to fight any Turkish incursion.

REUTERS SG RAI1852