So much for promoting the rights of the Kurds?
US troops clash with Kurds](http://www.dawn.com/2003/11/11/top15.htm)
Still doing Turkey’s dirty work, and alienating Iraqi Kurds at the same time.
Bremer moves against Kurdish workers’ party in north Iraq
Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Baghdad, yesterday declared that the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) and its affiliates which use northern Iraq as a safe haven would be treated as terrorist organisations by coalition troops. “President Bush has committed to end the use of Iraq as a terrorist haven. There is no place for terrorism or terrorist organisations in the new Iraq,” Mr Bremer said, singling out the PKK and its “aliases”, the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (Kadek) and the Kurdistan People’s Congress (Kongra Gel). The step is likely to please neighbouring Turkey, which has asked the US to take harsher measures against PKK guerrillas operating from Iraq. Mr Bremer released his statement just hours before President George W. Bush was to meet Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, at the White House.
Both sides are anxious to put differences over the war in Iraq behind them. In a deal reached last October to facilitate Turkey’s agreement to sending peacekeepers to Iraq, the US said it would “subdue the terrorist threat that might exist in this area”, referring to hideouts of the PKK in northern Iraq. The US has long classified the PKK as a terrorist organisation. In the event, the US told Turkey not to send its peacekeepers because of the danger of a confrontation with Iraqi Kurdish forces. Ankara continues to press the US to move against the PKK. General Ilker Basbug, the number two at Turkey’s General Staff, said on January 16: “Our view is that the US must start some military actions against the [PKK] terror group within a short space of time.”
However, a coalition move against the PKK in Iraq would be likely to anger Iraqi Kurds. “These people are not terrorists. They are simply asking for their rights in Turkey,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurd and member of the US-appointed Governing Council. “The US took this step only to satisfy Turkey.” Kurdish parties are pressing for guarantees of an autonomous Kurdish homeland within a federal Iraq to be written into Iraq’s transitional law, due to be passed by the Governing Council on February 28. Other Iraqi groups oppose granting the Kurds such a large degree of autonomy, though Kurdish groups have threatened to take the matter to a region-wide referendum as early as this year if their demands are not met. Turkey staunchly opposes granting autonomy to Iraq’s Kurds, fearing similar demands by their own Kurdish population.