Thursday, November 16, 2006

Turkey to "put pressure" on Iraq's PM Maliki to take action against Kurds

An article from the KurdishMedia web site from November 15th, 2006 reports on the visit Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was going to make to Turkey that day. According to the report from AKI, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to "put pressure" on al-Maliki to close rebel Kurdish PKK bases in northern Iraq, and to discourage any decision on whether Kirkuk province could join the Kurdistan Regional Government's autonomous partition.

The Kurds, meanwhile, consider Prime Minister Maliki's allegiances to be primarily to his Shiite power base, as reported by Terry McCarthy of ABC News on November 1, 2006. In this article found on the puk.org web site, McCarthy writes, "When [Maliki] came to power five months ago, he promised to bring Sunnis and Shiites together and said there would be national reconciliation, promising a 'wide-open door.' But today he appears to serve only Shiite interests."

The Asia Times has a very revealing article from May 13, 2006 on the relationship between the U.S., Turkey, Iran and Syria on the Kurdish rebel situation. It also has a report on the establishment of the Kurdish unified regional parliament published on May 12, 2006.

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