Turkey, the US and Iraq will set up a joint center in northern Iraq to curb Turkish Kurd rebels taking refuge in the region, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Friday.
“The plan is to set up a joint command of representatives from the three parties in Arbil,” Zebari, on a three-day visit to Turkey, told reporters after talks with Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan.
It would be “a key center to work together to ... ensure border security and prevent cross-border attacks on Turkey,” he said.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has long taken refuge in mountainous bases in northern Iraq, using the region as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.
Zebari called the PKK a “poisonous element” in bilateral ties, stressing that both the Baghdad government and the Kurdish administration of northern Iraq were determined to cooperate with Turkey to tackle the problem.
“There will be a combination of political, economic, military and intelligence measures to remove this poisonous element in our relations,” he said.
The center in Arbil, he said, will be part of recently inaugurated trilateral consultations between Turkey, the US and Iraq to outline measures to curb the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.
It would serve as “a field center to coordinate all activities on the ground,” he said.
A Turkish diplomat, who requested anonymity, said the center would deal mostly with sharing intelligence on the PKK.
Ankara has often accused the Iraqi Kurds, who run an autonomous administration in northern Iraq, of tolerating and even aiding the rebels.
But in a policy shift last year, it said it would seek to resolve the issue through diplomacy and intensified contacts with the Iraqi Kurds, whom it had long snubbed.
Iraqi Kurds are now included in the three-way talks and Zebari on Friday hailed the dialogue as “a new climate of understanding and cooperation.”
Babacan also acknowledged “a more positive atmosphere” between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds, but added that “steps producing concrete results [against the PKK] should become more frequent on the ground.”
He stressed that “ending the activities of this organization is a must for the full normalization of Turkish-Iraqi relations.”
Since December 2007 Turkish warplanes have bombed PKK hideouts in the region under a parliamentary authorization, which expires in October.
The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.
Zebari was to wrap up his visit today after a trip to Istanbul.
He and Babacan, along with other ministers, will meet again late next month or early March in Istanbul to discuss cooperation in various realms such as security, trade and transport, a Turkish diplomat said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS