Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejected Saturday the Turkish threats of staging incursion into the northern Kurdish territories to fight the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and called for diplomacy to ease the tension.

"Iraqi territories must be respected, and we will not accept any form of threats," Maliki said during a joint news conference with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, in the regional capital of Arbil.

"If there are some problems, we should not rely on weapons and threats, or use violence and power because this will increase tension and deepen problems," Maliki said at the end of his visit to Arbil, some 400 km north of Baghdad.

Maliki also rejected that his country to become a launch pad for others to attack neighboring states.

"We will not allow that Iraq to become a battleground and we don't want to harm neighboring countries, so we don't want the others to enter the Iraqi territory with a military incursion or fight of any kind," he said.

Turkey has been building up troops near the Iraqi border in recent weeks after it accused members from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) of stepping up attacks against Turkish troops from their hideouts in Iraq.

As for long-term U.S. army presence in the country, Maliki said this was "an issue for the Iraqi people to decide on. We have not engaged in talks over building permanent American military bases in Iraq."

Few days ago, U.S. President George W. Bush said that he predicted a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, similar to that in South Korea, maybe exceeding 50 years.

Source: Xinhua