It would be pretty difficult to see how heavy military equipment would get into the hands of the PKK," US State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said at a daily press conference on Friday. "Certainly it would not be anything that would be supported by this government or any member of the US military that I'm familiar with. There is no information that I have of any kind that would support such an allegation."On Saturday, Erdoğan appeared to be clarifying claims that the PKK in Iraq was using US-made tanks and heavy guns, saying the issue was not anything new and citing Internet media as a source. "It was on Internet sites in the past. It could be stolen or something else. There are photos showing PKK members getting training with these weapons on the Internet," he told a press conference as he wrapped up a 12-day visit to United States, where he attended a UN General Assembly meeting.
The prime minister also rectified a statement he made last week that Turkey would consider letting the US use Turkey in a possible troop pullout from Iraq. Erdoğan said use of Turkish soil was out of the question in response to inquiry about whether Turkey would help. "I said we could look warmly on this and assess it. This is all I said," he explained.
On an anti-terror deal that Turkey and Iraq signed on Friday, Erdoğan said it did not leave out the issue of hot pursuit of PKK terrorists across the border, emphasizing that the deal stipulated negotiations on this issue would continue.
The Iraqi and Turkish interior ministers signed the counterterrorism deal, but fell short of reaching a consensus on Turkish troops' right to pursue PKK militants in Iraq after the Iraqi Kurds controlling northern Iraq objected to the clause.
On Saturday, Iraqi Kurds said they were kept in the dark about the agreement between Baghdad and Ankara. "It would have been better if someone had told us what was going to be in the agreement," Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the Kurdish regional government's foreign affairs department, said in a statement posted on their official Web site.
"We are talking about a new democratic and federal Iraq, not an Iraq of dictatorship and one-party rule," he said. Turkey, the United States and much of the international community list the PKK as a terrorist group.
No giving up on Iran deal
Erdoğan also reiterated that the government was not planning to stop cooperation with neighboring Iran in the field of energy, saying Tehran was a key partner for Turkey in this area. "Russia is our biggest partner in energy and then comes Iran. We greatly need natural gas and, therefore, we cannot leave aside our cooperation with Iran," he said. Iran and Turkey signed a preliminary agreement in July to pump Iranian gas to Europe via Turkey despite objections from the US.
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