They INSULTED HER!!!
"U.S. practicing balancing act on Kurdish question; Turkey pursues rebels across the border" by Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times | December 19, 2007
BAGHDAD — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned Tuesday against any action that could destabilize Iraq after Turkey sent about 300 troops across the border in pursuit of Kurdish separatist guerrillas. The one-day incursion began hours before Rice arrived in Kirkuk.
The United States is in the midst of a delicate balancing act between two close allies: the Turkish government and the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq, where Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas often hide in between attacks on targets in southern Turkey.
The U.S. considers the PKK a terrorist organization.
Except for the guys attacking Iran!
You know, OUR GUYS!
During a visit this month, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said Washington shared Turkey's goal of ending PKK activities in Iraq "once and for all."
That doesn't sound good seeing as Turkey is a genocidal nation.
First Armenians, now Kurds?
And Turkish officials have said that the United States is supplying intelligence to assist in their attacks on the militant group.
Oh, and we helping! Ugh!
Rice reiterated her position Tuesday that the U.S., Iraq and Turkey share a "common interest in stopping the activities of the PKK."
But she said circumstances demanded "an overall, comprehensive approach to this problem."
"No one should do anything which threatens to destabilize the north," she told reporters in Baghdad.
Like INVADE or anything?
Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani refused to fly to Baghdad to meet Rice, citing U.S. support for limited incursions by Turkish forces fighting the PKK.
In the latest case, Kurdish officials said Turkish troops penetrated about 1 1/2 miles into Iraqi territory overnight, moving through rugged mountains near the Iranian border used by PKK rebels. Wire reports quoted the Turkish Defense Ministry as saying that its troops responded to a group of rebels spotted trying to infiltrate Turkey and dealt them a "heavy blow."
A news agency linked to the PKK reported that the rebels ambushed the Turkish troops, killing eight of them and injuring many more. It made no reference to PKK casualties.
Jabbar Yawir, deputy regional minister in charge of the peshmerga security forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirmed that clashes had occurred but said he had no information on casualties. Shortly after nightfall, the Turkish forces withdrew to their side of the border, he said.
Yawir characterized the incursion as "limited" and noted that the fighting took place in a remote region, far from any civilian population. But he warned that "if the Turkish forces penetrate to safe areas, where the Kurdish villages are located, then the Kurdistan region will defend itself."
Turkish news reports quoted Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying, "Our army is doing what it has to do right now."
"We do not have any negative attitude towards Iraq's territorial integrity, and we do not have any negative attitude towards the civilian citizens and our friends in Iraq," he told reporters in Ankara, the capital. "However, they are terrorists and our enemy, and those who are in the camps there are threatening our national unity."
Turkey has insisted on its right to pursue the rebels, and in its most serious air assault in years, its military jets bombed several villages Sunday in northern Iraq, killing at least one civilian and injuring several others.
Rice sidestepped a question about whether the U.S. had received advance notice of Tuesday's incursion. U.S. officials have acknowledged that they were informed of Turkey's plans Sunday, but Rice emphasized that the attack was Ankara's decision.
Rice's first stop Tuesday was Kirkuk, an oil-rich city about 150 miles north of Baghdad that remains a tinderbox for Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Rice's visit was intended to highlight a recent agreement under which Sunni Arabs ended a yearlong boycott of the provincial council in exchange for government posts. The city's ethnic Turkmens are still refusing to participate in the council.
U.S. officials worry violence could go up again as US troops return to pre-buildup levels by next summer.
Underlining the risk, and despite the progress, deadly attacks continue on a daily basis.
Police said a suicide bomber detonated the explosives strapped to his waist in a cafe in Attarah, a Shiite village about five miles north of Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, killing 16 people and injuring 28 others. Insurgents fleeing the troop buildup in Baghdad are believed to have established sanctuaries in the province, according to U.S. intelligence.
Another suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint in Baqubah, killing two people and injuring 12 others, police said.
In Baghdad, four people were killed and seven injured when a car bomb exploded at downtown Nasr Square, police said. At least eight others were found shot to death, five of them execution-style.
U.S.-led forces detained seven suspects during raids early Tuesday targeting Sunni insurgents in Baiji, Mosul and east of Samarra, the military said. A fugitive Shiite militant was captured with 11 other suspects in the Aziziya area, southeast of Baghdad."
I'm really tired of having been lied to about Iraq the last four months, so I'm not commenting much!
"Rice Visits Iraq Amid Strain With Turkey" by CARA BUCKLEY and SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Tuesday, visiting the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and then Baghdad, as tensions mounted along the country’s mountainous border with Turkey.
Shortly before the visit, Turkish troops staged a brief cross-border attack into northern Iraq to strike at a group of Kurdish militants there. The Turkish military, in a statement on its Web site, said its troops had inflicted heavy losses on the fighters after spotting them trying to cross into Turkey on Monday night.
American military officers in Washington and overseas said that the Turkish ground force sent across the border numbered only in the hundreds and that it moved fewer than two miles into Iraqi territory. Turkey said only that it was a “small-scale operation,” and indicated that the troops quickly returned to Turkey.
“Nothing the Turks have done to date should be considered a surprise,” said an American military officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing actions of a sovereign ally. “We’ve shared information as we said we would do. The decision to pursue military options is theirs.” American officials said the Turkish operation appeared to be over.
Ms. Rice sidestepped a query on the Turkish strike at a news conference in Baghdad, saying the United States, Iraq and Turkey had a “common interest” in stopping attacks by the Kurdistan Workers Party, known by its Kurdish initials, P.K.K.
Still, she reiterated words of caution for Turkey, which says it has the right to strike at the P.K.K. in Iraq because the group’s presence there threatens Turkey’s sovereignty.
“No one should do anything that threatens to destabilize the north,” Ms. Rice said.
The P.K.K. has bases in Turkey as well as Iraq, and the United States considers it a terrorist organization. The group, which wants an autonomous Kurdish region in eastern Turkey, has fought the Turkish military for decades.
The cross-border operation took place two days after Turkey carried out broad airstrikes in northern Iraq against the group. The United States provided intelligence and opened Iraqi airspace for the airstrikes, according to Turkey’s top military commander. Iraqi officials angrily protested the strikes, saying they had killed four people and displaced 286 families.
Yeah, wait t'til you see what they call it!
Pentagon officials said after Sunday’s airstrikes that the United States had “deconflicted” the airspace over northern Iraq for Turkey.
Yeah, they "DECONFLICTED" the airspace so Turkey could drop their bombs!!
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking in the capital, Ankara, used careful diplomatic language to describe Turkey’s military efforts but avoided speaking directly of the Tuesday strike.
“At the moment, our army is doing whatever is necessary,” he said, according to the official Anatolian News Agency. “From now on, our security forces will continue to do whatever is necessary.”
Turkey keeps a contingent of 500 to 1,000 special forces troops at an outpost in northern Iraq, as it has since the mid-1990s. Their role is to oversee and monitor, not to stage operations.
Ms. Rice did not detail the reason for the trip, her eighth to Iraq, though in visiting Kirkuk she highlighted the city’s pivotal role in determining the Iraqi geopolitical landscape.
Dec. 31 is the constitutional deadline for a referendum to decide whether the city should become the fourth province in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, though the vote seems unlikely to be held by then. The outcome is certain to play a role in determining whether Iraq will eventually be partitioned among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, a move Turkey would oppose if it strengthened Iraq’s Kurdish north.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Tuesday, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up in a public cafe in the embattled province of Diyala, a police official said, killing 11 people and wounding 18. A car bomb also detonated in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding seven."
Like how the Times gets around to the killing -- and minimizes it?
Here is the final insult for, Ms. Rice.
"Turkey Arrests Kurdish Leader" bySABRINA TAVERNISE
ISTANBUL — Turkish military authorities arrested the leader of the country’s Kurdish political party on Tuesday, saying he had illegally avoided military service. The arrest capped weeks of attempts to shut down the party, and his supporters said it was political.
Military authorities detained the leader, Nurettin Demirtas, in the airport in Ankara as he arrived from Germany late Monday. He was formally arrested later and is being held in a military jail in Ankara, Turkish officials said.
The party he leads, the Democratic Society Party, known by its initials in Turkish, D.T.P., is the only pro-Kurdish party in Turkey. Turkish authorities have shut down more than three of its predecessor parties.
Turkey has long oppressed its sizable Kurdish minority. Although conditions for Kurds have improved in recent years, a deep suspicion lingers.
Strains re-emerged in October, when Kurdish militants ambushed Turkish troops. The next month, Turkish authorities began an investigation of the party, questioning the relations between its members and the outlawed Kurdish militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K.
Police authorities had opened a case against Mr. Demirtas and many others for illegal avoidance of military service months ago. But the military has taken it over, and some of Mr. Demirtas’s supporters saw politics in the timing.
“This arrest is just another way to interfere in politics, especially now that there’s a closure case against the party,” said Hasip Kaplan, a member of the party, and of Parliament. “It’s part of the part of the psychological attack against D.T.P. that’s been happening for some time."
I didn't see Ms. Rice comment on that, either!
