Kurds warn Turks of unforgettable lesson
Updated: 2007-11-04 17:10
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq - A defiant spokeswoman for the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party said Saturday that if Turkey attacks the group's bases in Iraq's rugged northeastern mountains, the clandestine organization's fighters "will teach the Turks an unforgettable lesson."
Sozdar Avesta, a member of the party's political bureau, told The Associated Press in an interview in Iraq's ungoverned border region that despite international pressure the guerrilla group would not abandon its decades-long struggle against Turkey.
"We are fighting for the liberation of Kurdish people, we are fighting for our identity, language, our legitimate rights and self-determination," said Avesta, 35, one of a number of women PKK members.
Her remarks came as officials from Iraq and the United States, at an international meeting in Istanbul, pledged to try to stop cross-border attacks by PKK forces against military forces in Turkey's heavily Kurdish southeast.
The Turkish government has threatened to send troops into Iraq to chase the insurgent fighters, after a series of deadly clashes between the PKK and Turkish military in Turkey in recent months.
Officials fear that large-scale fighting in northern Iraq could destabilize the relatively peaceful north, and jeopardize gains that US officials say have been made in the rest of the country.
Iraq's central government has pledged to track and arrest leaders of the PKK, and cut off supplies. But any crackdown would require the cooperation of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
Turkey has accused Iraqi Kurdistan officials of backing the PKK, a charge that both the regional government and the guerrilla group deny.
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