“There was no weapons inside the aid material…," Gul

KIRKUK, Iraq, April 27 (IslamOnlione.net & News Agencies) - Turkey tried to smuggle grenades, night-vision goggles and dozens of rifles into the oil-producing city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq this week to fuel unrest and pave the way for a Turkish peacekeeping mission, American military officials said Sunday, April 27.

Men who identified themselves as Turkish Special Forces soldiers tried to transfer weapons hidden in an aid convoy, were bound for ethnic Turkmen living there, New York Times quoted the officials as saying.

Turkey has repeatedly said it might launch a military incursion into northern Iraq, citing what it says is abuse of Turkmen by Arabs and Kurds. Turkmen make up less than 5 percent of Iraq's population.

Saturday night, gunfire erupted as aid was distributed at a Turkmen political office in the city. One Arab and one Turkmen were wounded, witnesses said. It was unclear what led to the shooting.

The discovery of the smuggled arms came Wednesday, April 23, when a Turkish aid convoy reached an American checkpoint north of the city, officials told the paper. American soldiers, who had heard that Turkish Special Forces soldiers were trying to enter the city, questioned the men.

The American soldiers seized and then searched the half dozen vehicles in the convoy. They found several dozen AK-47 assault rifles and other military equipment, including a small number of American-made M-4 rifles and grenade launchers.

Night-vision goggles, radio scanners, pistols and banners and flags of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the main Turkmen political party in Iraq, were also found.

About half of the roughly two dozen men in the convoy identified themselves as Turkish Special Forces soldiers, New York Times reported.

The U.S leveled similar charges against the Syrian government, saying the Arab country smuggled night-vision goggles and other military equipment into Iraq. Damascus rejected the claims as baseless and meant to cover for a “clear occupation and aggression” against a U.N. Security Council country.

Kirkuk sits on top of huge oil reserves, and Kurds and Arabs claim that 100,000 members of each of their groups were expelled from the city by Saddam Hussein's government as part of “Arabization” of the area.

Kemal Yaycili, chief of the Iraqi Turkmen Front's new offices in Kirkuk and nearby Mosul, said local Turkmen needed to defend themselves against "our enemies." He said that six members of the ethnic group had been killed in Kirkuk since it was captured two weeks ago and that three had been killed in Mosul.

Denial

For its part, the Turkish government denied it had sent special forces and arms into Kurdish-held northern Iraq, with its Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul saying Sunday that security officials, and not special forces, were accompanying aid convoys.

"To provide the security of the convoys, there was an accompaniment of officials and people were aware of this," Gul was quoted by Agence  France-Presse (AFP) as telling reporters in Ankara, denying they had a large cache of weapons with them.

"There was no weapons inside the aid material apart from the weapons the officials carried on their persons," Gul said.

The Time Magazine Friday, April 25, quoted U.S. military sources as saying the mission of the commandos with an arsenal seized was to increase tension between the Turkmen and Kurdish population in Kirkuk to justify a Turkish military intervention in the area.

U.S. sources told the magazine that Turkish forces infiltrating northern Iraq would in the long run try to smuggle in weapons and money to give to the Turkmen minority, which has often clashed with the Kurds.

Turkey has threatened to send in soldiers to northern Iraq if Kurds try to seize Kirkuk and the oil-rich city of Mosul, whose revenues may inspire them to declare independence.

Turkey categorically opposes a Kurdish state next door, fearing that such a move could reignite insurgency among its own Kurdish population in southeastern Anatolia.

Turkish officials were greatly agitated when Kurdish fighters seized Mosul and Kirkuk earlier in the month, and put pressure on the United States to force them out.

U.S. forces are now in control of the two cities and Ankara has sent military observers to the area, under a deal with Washington, to observe the situation on the ground.

In another development, two Turkish soldiers were killed in clash with Kurdish rebels in the east of the country on Saturday, after three months of quiet.

The clash erupted late Saturday when troops on patrol in the eastern province of Bingol came upon a group of outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels, the agency quoted local officials as saying.

Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast has been the scene of a 15-year armed campaign by the PKK for Kurdish self-rule and a fierce crackdown by the Turkish army to quash the rebels.

Ankara, in the meantime, has undertaken a number of steps to broaden the freedoms of its Kurdish minority as part of efforts to align the country with European Union democracy norms.