Turkey says Iraq accepts cooperation against PKK

ANKARA, May 24 (Reuters) Iraq said it was ready to cooperate with Ankara against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas who use northern Iraq as a base, Turkey's foreign ministry said in a statement today.

Last month Turkey gave a diplomatic note asking Baghdad to help force the PKK out of northern Iraq.

''Iraq replied to our note with a note on May 17. In this counter note, the Iraqi government expresses its intention to cooperate over PKK terrorism,'' the Turkish foreign ministry statement said.

Turkish army chief Yasar Buyukanit last month called for a military operation into Iraq to quash PKK guerrillas.

Following Tuesday's bomb attack in Ankara which killed six people, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish security forces would do whatever was necessary to safeguard the country.

A mine explosion on Thursday killed six Turkish soldiers in southeastern Turkey, the deadliest single attack on Turkish forces in the last year.

The United States and Iraqi Kurdish leaders oppose Turkish troops going into northern Iraq and a Kurdish Iraqi official recently warned that talk of such a move was a ''dangerous escalation.'' The PKK has been fighting Turkey for an ethnic homeland since 1984 and Ankara blames it for more than 30,000 deaths since then.

Reuters SLD DB2232