Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office issued a statement on Wednesday, denying Turkish reports that he had offered to extradite leading rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq.
"We have said several times that the leaders of the PKK are not staying in Kurdish cities of Iraq but they live with 1,000 of their fighters in the rugged Qandil mountains," the statement quoted Talabani as saying.
The Iraqi president, who is himself a Kurd, stressed that it is impossible to arrest the PKK leaders and deliver them to Turkey.
Earlier media reports had quoted a Turkish government source as disclosing that President Talabani had promised to hand over some leading rebels of the northern Iraq-based PKK.
Talabani met visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan in Baghdad on Tuesday and told the latter that he did not exclude the possibility of extraditing PKK members, said a senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official also revealed that Turkish and Iraqi officials would meet in Ankara on Thursday and described the planned talks as the "final chance" to avert a major Turkish cross-border action against PKK rebels.
The issue of the hand-over may be taken up during the coming Thursday talks, said the official, adding "my personal impression is that they (Iraqis) might do something in cooperation with us."
The Turkish parliament approved on Oct. 17 a government motion backing a cross-border operation into northern Iraq for pursuing PKK militants.
The PKK, which has been fighting more than 20 years for an independent Kurdish country in southern Turkey, further fueled the tension on Sunday by killing 12 Turkish soldiers in a deadly ambush.
Turkey has been blaming the Iraqi government for its failure in checking the PKK fighters who use Iraq's northern Kurdish region as a launching pad for attacks against Turkish troops.
Source:Xinhua
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