Turkey welcomes US raid on Iraq camp, wants more

ANKARA, Jan 18 (Reuters) Turkey today welcomed a raid by US and Iraqi forces on a refugee camp of Turkish Kurds in northern Iraq as a first step towards combating Kurdish rebels, but insisted the camp must be shut down.

Iraqi and US troops conducted a search operation yesterday at the Makhmur refugee camp in northern Iraq, which Ankara has long argued provides a safe haven for militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Ankara has been urging US forces to crack down on the Turkish Kurd PKK rebels, who use Kurdish northern Iraq as a base.

''We desire a continuation of such steps ... in the context of our hopes for an end to the presence and activities of the PKK terrorist organisation in Iraq,'' Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

''The Makhmur camp must be closed. To this end, a climate must be created in which the PKK presence and pressure in the camp are ended and our citizens living there can decide freely on their future,'' it said.

''We view yesterday's operation as a first step in this direction.'' The camp was established in the 1990s when thousands of Kurds from Turkey crossed the border in a movement Ankara says was deliberately provoked by the PKK.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad said a cache of mortar rounds had been discovered during yesterday's operation, contradicting earlier comments by Iraqi Kurdish officials that no weapons had been found.

US State Department Undersecretary Nicholas Burns was in Ankara today to address Turkish concerns about the PKK and the general security situation in northern Iraq, where Turkey fears the Kurds are bent on creating an independent state.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to crush the rebels if the US and Iraqi government forces fail to take action, though most analysts dismiss the threats as rhetoric to impress voters.

Turkey faces presidential and parliamentary polls in 2007.

More than 30,000 people have been killed, mostly in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, since the PKK launched its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in 1984.

Reuters LL DB2241