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Ankara: The United States urged Nato ally Turkey yesterday to end its offensive against Kurdish PKK rebels in northern Iraq swiftly, but said it would not threaten to withdraw intelligence help.
Washington fears prolonging the Turkish operation, which began on February 21, will undermine stability in the region, particularly Iraq, though it backs Ankara's mission to crush the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and late last year began providing significant intelligence.
Visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he had been given no timetable for a Turkish withdrawal.
"The United States believes the current operation should be as short and as precisely targeted as possible," he told reporters. Before arriving in Ankara he had made clear that by short, he meant days or a week or two, not months.
"A short time is a relative concept, it could be one day or one year," Turkey's military General Staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, was quoted by Turkish television as saying.
But Gates, who held talks with Buyukanit, Turkey's President and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, played down any differences, saying the United States and Turkey had shared interests.
Curtail intelligence flow
"I think that those interests are probably not advanced by making threats, by threatening to cut off intelligence.
"The key is for us to make clear what our interests are, our concerns about the situation in Iraq," he said.
The Bush administration has been sharing intelligence with its chief military ally in the region, mainly to help its aerial bombing campaign to destroy PKK havens. If Ankara does not heed Washington's call to complete the operation quickly, Washington could curtail or cut off that intelligence flow.
Turkey's defence minister said troops, battling icy winter conditions, would stay in Iraq as long as necessary to accomplish their goal of ending the PKK threat from Iraq.
Thousands of Turkish troops, backed by warplanes and attack helicopters, crossed the border on February 21 to root out PKK fighters and destroy their numerous bases.
"It should be clear that military action alone will not end this terrorist threat," Gates added, saying Ankara must also take political and economic steps to isolate the PKK guerrillas and help support Turkey's large ethnic Kurdish minority.
Senior military sources in southeast Turkey told Reuters several hundred Turkish soldiers were ferried across the border by helicopter into northern Iraq on Wednesday.
A senior military source said around 10,000 troops were involved in the northern Iraqi operation, much centred around the Zap valley, a PKK stronghold.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek, in a newspaper interview, tried to quell mounting international concern. "We will leave Iraq as soon as we are done. We are not intending to remain any longer than necessary in minus 26 degree temperatures," he told Today's Zaman.
Turkey has put the PKK death toll at 230 since the campaign began. PKK said more than 100 Turkish troops had been killed.
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