December 19, 2007	Wednesday	Zilhaj 8, 1428

WASHINGTON: The United States is providing Turkey with real-time intelligence that has helped the Turkish military target a series of attacks this month against Kurdish separatists holed up in northern Iraq, including a large airstrike on Sunday, according to Pentagon officials.

US military personnel have set up a centre for sharing intelligence in Ankara, the Turkish capital, providing imagery and other immediate information gathered from US aircraft and unmanned drones flying over the separatists’ mountain redoubts, the officials said. A senior administration official said the goal of the US programme is to identify the movements and activities of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which is fighting to create an autonomous enclave in Turkey.

The United States is “essentially handing them their targets”, one US military official said. The Turkish military then decides whether or not to act on the information, and notifies the United States, the official said.

“They said, ‘We want to do something.’ We said ‘Okay, it’s your decision,’ ” the official said on Monday, although he denied the United States had explicitly approved the strikes.

Sunday’s airstrikes provoked outrage in Baghdad, particularly among Kurdish members of the country’s leadership. Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, which administers three northern Iraqi provinces, called the attack “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”. He blamed the US military, which controls Iraqi airspace, for allowing Turkish warplanes to cross the border. The Iraqi parliament also condemned the attacks on Monday.

The American role in aiding Turkey, a Nato ally, could complicate US diplomatic initiatives in Iraq, particularly efforts to push Iraqi political leaders to enact legislation aimed at promoting political reconciliation.

The cooperation with Turkey also places the United States in the position of aiding a country that refused to allow US forces to use its territory to open a northern front against the government of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It also alienates Iraq’s Kurdish minority, whose leaders strongly support the US troop presence in Iraq.

But persistent attacks in Turkey by PKK rebels operating from bases in the Qandil mountains have presented a thorny dilemma for US policy-makers. Turkey has threatened to mount a full-scale, cross-border incursion to clear out PKK camps in northern Iraq. That would could effectively open a new front in the Iraq war and disrupt the flow of supplies to the US military in Iraq, which receives 70 percent of its air cargo and a third of its fuel through Turkey.

The intelligence cooperation comes as senior US military and Pentagon officials have engaged in a series of talks with their Turkish counterparts to produce a more comprehensive strategy for combating the PKK, according to a senior military official familiar with the discussions. In addition to providing targets, US military officials said they have encouraged the Turks to employ non-military measures against the PKK and to hold a dialogue with the Iraqi government.

US intelligence has allowed the Turkish military to inflict what it called “significant” losses on a group of scores of Kurdish rebels in Iraq in an operation on Dec 1. It was also decisive in another Turkish strike on Sunday, when Iraqi officials said Turkish warplanes pounded Kurdish villages deep in northern Iraq, killing one woman and forcing hundreds of villagers to flee their homes in the largest aerial assault from Turkey this year.

Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates earlier stated that a dearth of “actionable intelligence” was preventing more aggressive actions against the separatists, and senior military officials acknowledged that the PKK, labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States, had not been not a priority for the US military in Iraq as it grappled with a persistent insurgency and sectarian fighting.

Turkey, according to US officials, was eager to have the information. “They wanted to go after them,” a US military official said. The intelligence centre was set up in Ankara with the help of US military personnel. In addition, scarce US military reconnaissance aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles were diverted from other parts of Iraq to search for PKK locations in the mountainous area along Iraq’s border with Turkey.

US officials said Kurdish regional forces in northern Iraq recently closed PKK offices and set up roadblocks in an attempt to cut off supplies to rebel camps.

The high-level talks are a response to a pledge made by President Bush to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Nov 5 to address a rash of cross-border incursions into Turkey. Up to 100,000 Turkish troops were deployed along Turkey’s border with Iraq after more than 40 soldiers and civilians were killed in PKK attacks this fall.

Erdogan told reporters before a trip to the United States last month that Turkey has “run out of patience with the terrorist attacks being staged from northern Iraq” and said relations between the United States and Turkey were “undergoing a serious test”.

But a senior US administration official said the “deal on intelligence” and military visits had created “a sense that we’re in a different phase of this relationship. The Turks want to see how this works”.—Dawn/ LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post