Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said that his country expected more cooperation from Iraq in the fight against terrorism, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Saturday.
Gul made the remarks during his telephone conversation with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Friday.
He said that Turkey did not want its relations with Iraq to deteriorate and that the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) was not able to poison the relations between Turkish and Iraqi people.
Zebari, on his part, said that the Iraqi government was prepared either for bilateral talks or a three-way talks that will include the United States to address all the matters especially Turkey's security fears from attacks and activities by the PKK.
Zebari also expressed Iraq's readiness to invite a tripartite committee to meet in Baghdad as soon as possible.
Last month, Turkish Army chief Gen. Yasar Buyukanit once again called on the government to authorize a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to crack down on the PKK, which stepped up attacks in southeast Turkey in recent months.
Turkey has been asking Iraq and the U.S. to take concrete measures to crush the PKK. Turkish authorities also accused local Kurdish leaders of tolerating and even supporting the PKK, which was listed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, the U.S. and the European Union.
According to the Turkish Armed Forces, there are about 2,800 to 3,100 PKK members in northern Iraq and between 1,800 and 1,900 inside Turkey.
The PKK launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.
Source: Xinhua
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