Turkey Warns of Preemptive Action Against Rebel Kurds

Reiterating demands that American forces take action against Turkish Kurd rebels in Iraq, Turkey warned that it might intervene to disarm and evict the guerrillas from their mountain strongholds in northern Iraq if the U.S. fails to do so.

“The U.S. has promised to remove the terrorists. We are still waiting for America to fulfill its promise. We believe that it will,” Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told The Times in an interview Saturday. “But Turkey has the right to take preemptive action to defend its own security interests, just as Israel and the United States do. The U.S. government must take this issue seriously.”

Gul spoke a day after the U.S. and Turkey formally abandoned plans to deploy as many as 10,000 Turkish troops to Iraq to help U.S. forces restore peace.

Washington withdrew its request for the Turkish contingent because of resistance from the Iraqi Governing Council, particularly its Kurdish members. Turkey and the Kurds of northern Iraq have long been adversaries; other Iraqis also were suspicious of bringing in Turks, who ruled Iraq for nearly 400 years under the Ottoman Empire.

Although the Turkish forces would not have been deployed in Iraq’s north, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, leaders of the two Iraqi Kurdish factions that have run northern Iraq as an autonomous area since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, accuse Turkey of seeking to undermine gains made by their regional administration.

Turkey, for its part, fears that Iraq’s Kurds are seeking to establish an independent state -- a move that would probably refuel separatist sentiment among Turkey’s own 12 million Kurds.

Kurds and their role in postwar Iraq have become a source of friction between the U.S. and Turkey, who are NATO allies.

In a bid to improve ties with the U.S., Turkey’s parliament approved a bill last month giving the government a yearlong mandate to send troops to Iraq. In exchange, Turkey said it expected the U.S. to disarm and deport about 5,000 Turkish Kurd rebels from northern Iraq.

The rebels’ Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, waged a 15-year war for Kurdish independence that claimed nearly 40,000 lives. They announced a unilateral truce after the capture of their leader in 1999, but have threatened to resume their battle if attacked.

The U.S. has pledged to move against the PKK, which is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, even though the deal for sending Turkish forces to Iraq has fallen through. “The United States is committed to eliminating all terrorist threats in Iraq, including from the PKK,” a U.S. Embassy spokesman here said Sunday.

But sources said Pentagon officials and the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, are blocking action against the PKK on the grounds that it would require thousands of troops that the U.S. can ill afford to spare while attacks on American forces are escalating.

A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, complained that even Iraqi Kurdish groups that until recently helped Turkish forces battle the Turkish Kurd rebels in Iraq “are now protecting them.”

Gul noted that Turkey had helped shield Iraq’s Kurds from Saddam Hussein by allowing U.S. planes patrolling a “no-fly” zone over Kurdish areas to be based in Turkey. But now, he said, “the Kurds are behaving irresponsibly in their relations with Turkey, and the United States would be committing an historic error if it sides with these marginal groups.”

The warnings from Turkey come as congressional leaders in Washington continued to urge the Bush administration to overhaul its strategy in Iraq.

Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, called Sunday for revamping the 24-member Iraqi Governing Council appointed by the United States.

Instead, he said on CNN’s “Late Edition,” control should be given to “a provisional government like we have in Afghanistan ... because the military of Iraq, the military police, the allies, all are anchored through government.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Governing Council needed to be “reorganized” and urged the Bush administration to give greater control of military operations in Iraq to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and to turn over civilian affairs to the United Nations.

Biden, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” said President Bush should call a summit with European leaders to discuss NATO involvement and the Governing Council. He also said leaders should consider establishing a “high commissioner” who would run the civilian side of the government, reporting to NATO and the U.N. Security Council.

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Times staff writer Leslie Hoffecker in Washington contributed to this report.