Turkey to target sanctions at PKK

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the measures, agreed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, were not yet in force and he denied a television report that Turkey had closed its airspace to flights to and from northern Iraq.

"When we talk of economic sanctions, we don’t mean to cause difficulty to people living in Turkey and Iraq," Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told a news conference, striking a relatively mild tone after the tough rhetoric of recent days.

"We are targeting the economic sources of the terrorist organisation and those elements providing support to the terrorist organisation," he added.

NATO-member Turkey knows economic sanctions could end up hurting its own economy as much as that of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which is run by Masoud Barzani. Turkey accuses Barzani and his administration of providing shelter and support to an estimated 3,000 PKK guerrillas.

Barzani denies the charges but says he will not turn over any Kurd to Turkish authorities.

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Rice holds talks with Erdogan and other top officials in the Turkish capital before heading to Istanbul for a meeting of foreign ministers from Iraq’s neighbours and major powers that is sure to be dominated by tensions between Ankara and Baghdad.

Rice has promised unspecified "concrete action" and is prodding Iraq’s government, particularly the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq, to curb the PKK by closing its bases and arresting leaders.

Firm and resolute action was needed immediately to constrain the PKK, but military action would be in nobody’s interest and further dialogue was vital, British Defence Minister Des Browne said after talks with Barzani in the northern Iraqi city Arbil.

Browne stressed that the meeting of Iraq’s neighbours in Istanbul would be a key forum for addressing the PKK issue as cross-border problems needed regional solutions.

Washington and Baghdad hope the talks this week and next can help avert a major cross-border operation, which would further destabilise an already volatile region.

But Erdogan is under tremendous pressure to act.

Turkish diplomats say the meeting with Bush will be key to determining whether an incursion should take place or not.

Turkish newspapers said on Thursday that the armed forces’ deputy chief of General Staff, General Ergin Saygun, and Major General Kenan Kocak, who is in charge of a planning any cross-border operation, would travel with Erdogan to Washington.

Analysts question Ankara’s willingness to authorise a major incursion, saying Turkish leaders still hope their rhetoric will push U.S. and Iraqi authorities into acting against the PKK.

Turkey’s large-scale incursions in 1995 and 1997, involving an estimated 35,000 and 50,000 troops respectively, failed to dislodge PKK rebels from the Iraqi mountains.

The powerful army, NATO’s second largest, will want to avoid getting bogged down in a protracted fight against veteran guerrillas in difficult terrain the PKK has been in command of for several years, especially as winter looms.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. The United States and European Union, like Turkey, brand the group as terrorist.

(Additional reporting by Emma Ross-Thomas in Cizre)