Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Baghdad, Oct 24, (VOI)- The office of the Iraqi President Jalal al-Talabani denied on Wednesday media reports suggesting that Talabani pledged to the Turkish foreign minister to hand over leaders of the Turkish outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“We repeatedly confirmed that leaders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are not residing in the Iraqi Kurdish cities. Rather, they live along with thousands of PKK’s fighters in Mount Qandil and thus it is not possible to arrest them nor hand them over to Turkey,” Talabani’s office said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

On Wednesday, news agencies quoted a senior Turkish official as saying that Iraqi President Jalal al-Talabani told the Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan of Baghdad’s agreement to “hand over Turkish rebels to Ankara.”

Minister Babacan had arrived on Tuesday morning in Baghdad where he met with top Iraqi officials to discuss the PKK’s presence in northern Iraq near the borders with Turkey.

Talabani’s office statement also explained that President Talabani, during a news conference following meeting the Turkish minister, said that Iraq will not hand over Iraqi Kurdish leaders “in response to a question verifying reports that Turkey asked for the hand over of Iraqi Kurdish leaders allegedly involved in supporting the PKK’s fighters.”

Media reports recently claimed that Turkey asked to hand over Iraqi Kurdish leaders accused by Ankara to support the Turkish outlawed PKK.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari, on Tuesday, told reporters “the Iraqi government did not receive any list of Iraqis wanted by Turkey on charges of supporting the PKK.”

“The Iraqi government only received a wanted list of PKK’s leaders,” Zibari explained.

Ankara threatened of a possible military incursion into northern Iraq to chase fighters of the PKK after Turkish soldiers were ambushed near the Iraqi border. 16 soldiers were killed and eight went missing during the ambush according to the Turkish army.

The Turkish parliament approved last Wednesday a memorandum forwarded by the government allowing the Turkish army to hunt down members of the PKK, or Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan in Kurdish, in northern Iraq. Only 19 out of 555 legislators in the Turkish parliament voted against the proposal.