The statement from the United States came after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice entailed a possible joint Turkish-US operation against the PKK in northern Iraq. Reports in the US media later said that Washington may launch air strikes on the PKK targets.
Asked to comment on the reports, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Tuesday: “I am not aware of any American support for an air strike but actionable intelligence is something that we can provide.” Actionable intelligence refers to information that can be used for a military operation.
The US has called on Turkey to show restraint, although it said it understood the Turkish concerns after three recent PKK attacks left dozens of civilians and soldiers dead. Washington is also pressing the Iraqi Kurds, who effectively run northern Iraq, to take action on the terrorist group.
A US official quoted in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday said US President George W. Bush assured his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gül in a recent phone conversation that the US was looking seriously into options beyond diplomacy to stop the attacks coming from the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. “It’s not ‘Kumbaya’ time anymore -- just talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough. Something has to be done,” the US official said.
In Washington, the Bush administration was under attack for not taking the necessary measures before Turkey had to start discussing military action in northern Iraq. At a recent conference discussing Turkey’s possible operation in Iraq, Richard Holbrooke, a former US assistant secretary of state, and Mark Parris, a former US ambassador to Turkey, agreed that things would not have been at the current stage if the Bush administration had heeded Turkey’s concerns and taken action in time.
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