IRBIL, Oct 21: Iraq’s president, a Kurd, ordered Kurdish guerrillas on Sunday to lay down their arms or leave Iraq after the rebels ambushed a military unit inside Turkey, killing 12 soldiers and increasing pressure on the Turkish government to stage a cross-border incursion.

Hours after the ambush, Turkey fired about 15 artillery shells toward Kurdish villages in the border area in northern Iraq but caused no casualties, an Iraqi army officer said.

A spokesman for the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, also said a group of rebels killed and captured a number of Turkish forces during clashes about 70 kilometres inside Turkish territory.

“The PKK fighters were in a defensive position when they killed and injured a number of Turkish soldiers and captured another number,” the spokesman, Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi, said without being more specific.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani urged the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, to stop their attacks amid fears a Turkish incursion would destabilise the relatively peaceful autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

“We have appealed to the PKK to desist fighting and to transform themselves from military organisations into civilian and political ones,” Talabani said. “But if they (the PKK) insist on the continuation of fighting, they should leave Kurdistan, Iraq, and not create problems here.”

Talabani’s call on the PKK rebels to lay down their arms or get out of Iraq is the strongest indication to date of his exacerbation with the rebels’ actions and his wish to distance himself, as well as Iraq’s Kurds, from the rebels.

Talabani was speaking at a joint news conference with Massoud Barzani, leader of Iraq’s Kurdish region, in the city of Irbil, 350 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Iraq’s national parliament, meanwhile, voted unanimously on Sunday to adopt a resolution rejecting the use of force by Turkey to settle the border crisis and calling on the PKK guerrillas to leave Iraq.

“I feel sorry about today’s incident,” Talabani said, alluding to Sunday’s clashes. “I regret the shedding of blood, whether it is Turkish or Kurdish,” he said, adding that he will meet on Tuesday with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ali Babacan.

He did not say where the meeting would take place.

Talabani tempered his strong words, however, acknowledging the difficulties in controlling the rebels who operate from bases in northern Iraq.

“The leaders of PKK are not within our reach. They are based in Kurdistan’s rugged mountains and the Turkish army, with all its might, was unable to dislodge or capture them,” Talabani said, commenting on Turkish demands that Iraqis expel the PKK rebels from their country.

“How can we arrest and hand them over to Turkey?”—AP