Top Turkish and US military officials held talks here on Saturday on joint efforts to combat Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq in the second such meeting this week, the Turkish army said.
Turkish army chief General Yasar Buyukanit and the commander of US forces in Europe, General Bantz Craddock, discussed "co-operation issues in the joint struggle against the PKK terrorist organisation, including intelligence sharing," the army statement said.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice-chairman General James Cartwright and General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, met with the Turkish army's number two, General Ergin Saygun, in Ankara on Tuesday.
The talks followed pledges by US President George W. Bush earlier this month that Washington would provide Ankara with real-time intelligence on the movements of militants from the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Militants from the PKK use bases in northern Iraq to launch attacks across the border in Turkey.
The pledge was largely seen as tacit US approval for limited cross-border Turkish strikes, notably air raids, against PKK targets in northern Iraq. Ankara said last week that the intelligence-sharing had begun. The Turkish parliament last month authorised the government to order troops into northern Iraq if necessary to crack down on PKK camps there.
Turkey has massed an estimated 100,000 troops and military equipment along the Iraqi border. Washington and Baghdad oppose any large-scale Turkish military operation in northern Iraq, fearing it could destabilise a relatively calm region of the war-torn country. The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community, has waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish south-east since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
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