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Turkey Warns Iraqi Kurdish Parliament against Separatist Moves
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Barzani, right, and Talabani
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Additional reporting by Saad Abdul Majid, IOL Turkey Correspondent
ANKARA, October 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Turkish government expressed its concern Friday, October 4, to the Kurdish parliament, warning it Ankara would not tolerate any decisions leading to the establishment of a separatist Kurdish state in Northern Iraq.
Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit reiterated warnings that Ankara would counter any Iraqi Kurdish moves toward independence.
This issue is at the core of Turkey's opposition to U.S. plans to invade Iraq.
For his part, Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Siena Gurel declared that Turkey's reaction would be "tough, strong, and even violent", should any signal come out from the Kurdish parliament's session to that effect (declaring an independent state or the intention to do so).
Deputy Prime Minister Dawlat Baghli, repeated the same warnings, calling on the U.S. to "consider the Turkish interests in the region", while handling the Iraqi issue.
The Turkish media also expressed its worries, stressing that the newly-found unity between Massoud Barzani, chief of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), would eventually lead to forming a Kurdish state.
However, both Talabani and Barzani, speaking before the assembly Friday, seemed to be directing their speeches mainly to address the Turkish worries.
"Kurds will not pose a threat to their neighbors' security and stability, and we are prepared to give assurances" toward that end, Barzani said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Talabani, for his part, stressed that Kurdish support for a federal Iraq, far from betraying separatist aspirations, was meant to "safeguard Iraq's unity".
"Kurdish unity is not directed against anyone," Talabani told the assembly members and guests who included UN officials operating in the region and Danielle Mitterrand, widow of the late French President Francois Mitterrand.
In its meeting in Arbil, the Kurdish parliament endorsed a U.S.-brokered deal between the two main Kurdish groups sharing control of northern Iraq at its first session in six years.
The assembly unanimously ratified the agreement signed in Washington in September 1998 by Barzani and Talabani, who attended the chamber's first meeting with all its members since bloody clashes between their factions peaked in 1996.
Parliament Speaker Rozh Nuri Shaweess of the KDP, who opened the landmark meeting, read a message from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressing support for the KDP-PUK reconciliation and solidarity with Iraqi Kurds.
The KDP holds 51 seats in the regional parliament elected in 1992 and the PUK 49, while five seats are reserved for Assyrian Christians.
"Today is no less important than that on which the parliament was elected," Barzani told the assembly before "apologizing" to victims of the factional fighting that cost some 3,000 lives.
The KDP chief thanked the U.S., British and Turkish governments for protecting the Kurdish enclave by enforcing a "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq, policed by U.S. and British warplanes based at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey.
The region has been off limits to the Iraqi government since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
The two parties agreed on a draft constitution for a future "Iraqi federal republic" which they plan to present to the parliament for approval, in addition to a draft constitution for their enclave.
The PUK made changes in its parliamentary bloc Friday, replacing five members who died over the past few years and 18 others who stepped down.
The assembly is based in Arbil, the regional capital of the Kurdish enclave which came under KDP control in the 1996 fighting. However, it is expected to hold a one-off meeting in the PUK's stronghold of Suleimaniya within days to underscore the inter-Kurdish reconciliation.
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