Kurd rebels said quitting Iraq camps due Turk threat

ANKARA, July 1 (Reuters) Four ex-members of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said today the guerrillas were vacating camps in northern Iraq due to fear of a possible incursion into the area by Turkish troops.

Turkey's powerful armed forces have urged the government to allow an incursion into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq to crush up to 4,000 PKK militants who use the region as a base from which to attack security and civilian targets inside Turkey.

The rumours of a possible Turkish incursion have rattled financial markets and have drawn warnings from the United States, Ankara's NATO ally, to stay out of Iraq.

''In the last few days the rumours of a cross-border operation has triggered fear within the organisation (PKK). All the camps have been emptied,'' one of the ex-rebels said in a televised news conference.

The four, one of them a woman, handed themselves over to Turkish authorities this weekend after escaping from a PKK camp in northern Iraq, the state Anatolian news agency said.

At their news conference, held at a paramilitary police base in southeast Turkey's Sirnak province, the four -- who wore masks to disguise their identities -- also said they had seen two US armoured vehicles deliver weapons to the PKK at their camp.

The claim, which could not be independently verified, was widely reported in the Turkish media and is bound to stoke further Turks' deep suspicions about US policy in Iraq.

Turkey has long urged US occupying forces in Iraq to crack down on the PKK rebels. Washington says it understands the Turks' frustration but its forces are sorely stretched battling an insurgency in central Iraq.

Some Turkish nationalists accuse Washington of favouring the creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, a move they fear would destabilise Turkey's own Kurdish southeast.

Asked about the ex-rebels' claim, the US embassy in Ankara reiterated Washington's view that the PKK is a terrorist organisation. ''We do not speak to them, we have no contacts with them,'' embassy spokeswoman Kathryn Schalow told Reuters.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul reiterated today Turkey's readiness to send troops into Iraq if US and Iraqi government forces fail to tackle the PKK.

Asked about the ex-rebels' claim about the US armoured vehicles, Gul said he was still awaiting a detailed report.

Turkey's centre-right government is under mounting public pressure to take tough action as July 22 parliamentary elections loom. Nationalist parties are expected to do well in the polls.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

Reuters KK VP0032