The leader of the Kurdistan Regional Authority in Iraq, Massoud Barzan, called Friday for talks with Turkey. The call was immediately rejected by Ankara, which accuses Barzani of deliberately harboring 3,000 to 5,000 guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party who have been going back over into Turkey and blowing people up or killing them (i.e. engaging in terrorism).
Sawt al-Iraq writes in Arabic of three important developments on the Turkey/ Kurdistan front. First, Ankara announced its refusal to conduct any direct talks with the officials of the Kurdistan Regional Authority in Iraq, insisting rather on going through Baghdad (i.e. through the federal government of Iraq).
The Turkish government also said that it is “more than serious” on the issue of making an incursion into Iraq to wipe out the rebels of the PKK on the grounds of fighting terrorism that menaces Turkey. Some 70,000 to 100,000 Turkish troops are massed on the Iraqi border. Turkey has the second largest military in NATO.
Barzani, leader of the Iraqi Kurds, announced that Kurdistan is “ready to defend itself” against any Turkish military incursion.
US Secretary of Defense announced that the US would intervene against the PKK guerrillas.
See also this AFP report on the building conflict.
An important Shiite cleric of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) was assassinated on Friday in south Baghdad.
Danny Postel on how the Neoconservatives are big supporters of the terrorist MEK [Mojahedin-e Khalq] organization that has blown up lots of people in Iran and has now been adopted by the US Pentagon. It is almost certainly a major source, along with some Kurdish groups, of the false information on Iran continually spewed by US generals in Iraq. I.e., just as the Neoconservatives ‘ran’ Chalabi to mislead the US government, so now they are running the MEK for the same purpose. My country is run by a congeries of Cults.
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Tom Engelhardt asks, “do we already have our own Pentagon Papers?”
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