Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

More documents

Recommendations

Info

56 m Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti Kurdish militants release 8 Turkish soldiers in Iraq The Associated Press ISTANBUL: Kurdish rebels released eight Turkish soldiers Sunday, a day be¬ fore the Turkish prime minister was to hold a meeting with President George W. Bush that was expected to play an impor¬ tant role in whether Turkey launches at¬ tacks on guerrilla bases in northern Iraq. Though rebel leaders said the move was meant as an olive branch, experts said it seemed unlikely to soften Turk¬ ish demands for tough action against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK, which has killed more than 40 Turks in cross-border raids in the past month. Turkey has ruled out talks with the PKK and has dismissed past overtures by the rebels as attempts to improve their image or undercut Turkish mili¬ tary and political pressure. "I cannot see any kind of link be¬ tween the release ofthe soldiers and the eradication of PKK in northern Iraq" that Turkey is pressing for, said Yalim Eralp, a former Turkish diplomat. "Neither will anyone in the state insti-. tutions." Even as news of the release spread, skirmishes between the two sides con¬ tinued, with two Kurdish rebels and a government-paid village guard killed in the town of Idil, in the border province of Sirnak, according to state-run Anato¬ lia news agency. Still, the soldiers' plight has featured daily in Turkish newspapers, and their release removed one of the issues that has been putting domestic pressure on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to launch a cross-border operation against the rebel bases in northern Iraq. And the timing on the eve of Er¬ dogan's meeting with Bush in Washing¬ ton was no accident. "I'm making a call to all national and international powers, mainly to the U.S., based on these principles: They should support a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question, instead of a viol¬ ent and armed one," Murat Karayilan, a PKK commander based in northern Iraq, told the pro-Kurdish Firat press agency. "We released these soldiers to make James Carroll clear that we want to solve the Kurdish problem with peaceful means and methods," he added. The United States and Iraq have urged Erdogan not to resort to a crossborder incursion, which could destabi¬ lize the one area of Iraq that has been relatively calm. At the same time, the United States has emphasized that it has classified the PKK as a terrorist organi¬ zation and assured Ankara they are a "common enemy." If nothing else, the PKK move will give Bush leverage to push Erdogan to negotiate with Massoud Barzani, the president of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, whom Ankara accuses of backing the PKK rebels, said Huseyin Bagci, who teaches interna¬ tional relations at the Middle East Tech¬ nical University in Ankara. "Now, Bush will say, 'Don't attack Barzani, he made this release possi¬ ble,' " Bagci said. "Turkey will have to negotiate with Barzani." The eight Turkish soldiers were handed over to Iraqi officials, who then delivered them to U.S. military person¬ nel for transfer to Turkish authorities, according to the U.S. State Department. The soldiers were seized in an Oct. 21 ambush inside Turkish territory that left 12 other soldiers dead. For Turkey, the war is real ISTANBUL ending capacity to "make the situation worse." Tur¬ Here in Turkey, Condoleezza Rice offered key, a staunch U.S. ally, urged restraint four-and-a- sage advice to Turkish leaders ahead of the half years ago when Bush rolled his dice in Iraq. But Washington meeting between President when the gamble was lost, it was nations in the George W. Bush and Prime Minister Recep Middle East not America that paid. Turkey's Tayip Erdogan. "Effective action means action that turn to pony up has come. can deal with the threat," she said Friday, but won't The mood here is somber because when war be¬ "make the situation worse." gins, it will be real. Turks understand that the United The Turkish military, with a deployed force of up States, thousands of miles away, is only virtually at to 100,000 soldiers, is poised to attack positions of war. U.S. soldiers are killing and being killed, to be militant Kurdish separatist fighters sure. Yet the main result of their in the Kandil Mountains of north¬ presence as an occupation force ern Iraq. Their cross-border forays has been to ignite and sustain a set into Turkey over the last five weeks Washington again of civil wars now including Tur¬ have killed dozens of Turks, both displays its unending key's that have nothing to do soldiers and civilians. Iraqi Kurds with America. Indeed, despite the tacitly support their fellow Kurds, capacity to 'make the neocon rhetoric of "fight them and Americans have done nothing there instead of here," the U.S. oc¬ to dissuade either group. Erdogan situation worse.' cupation of Iraq defends against no is under enormous pressure to re¬ direct threat to America. As Sad¬ spond to such attacks, but Rice dam's weapons of mass destruction highlighted "the need to look for an effective were a paranoid myth, so is the much-hyped dread of strategy, not just one that's going to strike out, some¬ "Islamofascism," a phenomenon that, if it did exist, how, and not deal with the problem." would threaten Islamic peoples and values far more As viewed from Turkey, American responses than anything in the West. The problem, of course, is throughout this crisis range from duplicity to double that militant Islamic extremists, however defined, standards. The cautionary message that Rice con¬ are empowered by the U.S. occupation, not disarmed. veyed to her Foreign Ministry counterparts here, and Iraq has become a West Point for suicide bombers. that Bush is expected to echo, defines the exact op¬ Even then, the threat remains local. And although all posite ofpolicies pursued to this day by the Bush ad¬ the belligerents target the American occupiers, and ministration itself. The conditions that created the will do so as long as the occupation continues, Amer¬ terrible prospect facing Turkey an immediate war ica has no authentic enemy among Iraq's sectarian with rebel Kurds based in Iraq have been wholly belligerents. Turkey does. manufactured in Washington, which displays an un- In the United States, meanwhile, confusion reigns.
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti After effectively voting against the Iraq occupation last November; after denouncing it in successive polls; after seeing the Bush administration reject its own re¬ view panel's call for a shift to diplomacy; after the touted "surge" led to more ofthe same; after the shock ofcurrent oil prices made the real Bush agenda in Iraq plainer ever; and after Dick Cheney and George W. Bush made the mad prospect of attack on Iran seem possible the American public has sunk into a dis¬ pirited, and perhaps guilt-induced, detachment from the entire mess. (Again last week, Congressional Democrats, debating appropriations, dared look the Pentagon in the eye and promptly blinked.) No such detachment is possible here in Turkey. Before Bush's war changed everything in this re¬ gion, Turkish hopes were high. An expansive Euro¬ pean Union beckoned. Turks were poised to play a historic role as the bridge between Islam and the 2007 is deadliest year for U.S. troops in Iraq 6 deaths in single day bring total to 852 By Damien Cave BAGHDAD: Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks Monday, the military said Tuesday, tak¬ ing the number of deaths this year to 852 and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for U.S. troops. Military officials also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two detained during a January raid of a consulate of¬ fice in Erbil. The potential release ofthe Iranians may reflect American approv¬ al of some signs that Iran is cooperating with demands that it stanch the flow of bomb-making materials into Iraq. Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, a mili¬ tary spokesman, said that recently dis¬ covered caches of components used to make deadly roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, "do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made," suggesting that Iran has limited explo¬ sives trafficking across the border after promising to do so. American commanders have stopped short of declaring that Iran has in fact complied with the United States' de¬ mands, and Smith said Tuesday that the release of the nine Iranian prisoners was not a diplomatic reward but rather the perfunctory end to a criminal inves¬ tigation. "These individuals have no continuing value, nor do they pose a fur¬ ther threat to Iraqi security," he said. Smith did not say why the two Irani¬ ans captured in January at an Iranian consulate office in Erbil were held for nine months, after Iran insisted that they were harmless government workers. But Iraqi officials welcomed the an¬ nouncement. Mohammed al Haj Hamud, Iraq's deputy foreign minister, West. But then they found that, in the "us-againstthem" war on terror, no such bridge was wanted. Europe got nervous about Turks already in its cities, and lately European countries have taken actions Turkey regards as friendly to the Kurdish rebels it is fighting. Now come warnings that, if Turkey re¬ sponds to its made-in-Washington terror threat ex¬ actly as Washington does "to strike out, somehow" then Turkey can kiss EU admission goodbye. The question is sharper in the United States: How much higher can the rubble pile of Bush's wreckage mount before Americans emerge from the stupor of shame to stop him? James Carroll's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe. said the release would "improve the re¬ lations between the three countries" of Iraq, Iran and the United States before another round of planned meetings on security. "We want good relations with Iran and for Iran to avoid conducting any actions inside Iraq," he said. "Àt the same time, the Iraqi government is keen to maintain its relationship with its first and strongest ally, the United States of America." Five of the American soldiers killed on Monday died in two roadside bomb attacks near Kirkuk, Smith said. A sixth soldier died Monday during combat op¬ erations in Anbar Province, according to a military statement. The deaths come only a few days after the military announced a steep drop in the rate ofAmerican deaths this year. In October, 38 American service members died in Iraq, the third-lowest monthly tally since 2003, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks military deaths. The total in No¬ vember, if the current pace continues, would be higher but still far below the war's average of 69 American military deaths per month. Despite the decline, American com¬ manders acknowledged that 2007 would be far deadlier than the second-worst year, 2004, when 849 Americans died, many ofthem in major battles for control of insurgent strongholds like Falluja. Military officials attribute the rise this year to an expanded troop presence during the so-called surge, which brought more than 165,000 troops to Iraq, and sent units out of large bases and into more dangerous communities. Commanders maintain that despite the high cost in terms of lives lost, the strategy has brought improved security to the country and "tactical momentum" that could stabilize Iraq permanently. But violence in the country contin¬ ues. Military officials announced Tues¬ day the discovery of a mass grave hold¬ ing 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. The grave was found Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation, in the Lake Tharthar area, a desolate rural area near the site of another grave, holding 25 bodies, that was found less than a month ago. Local police officials said the bodies were dumped in and around an aban¬ doned building. "Some were buried in wells and some were left in rooms used as prisons," said a police officer who helped clear the grave. "These corpses are part of what we expect to find more of in the future." Just south of Kirkuk, the police said that clashes with Iraqi and American forces on Tuesday left four gunmen dead. In a separate incident, gunmen at¬ tacked and killed the mayor of small village about 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, south of Kirkuk, and wounded his son, as they drove to a neighboring town. A member of the governing council in Mosul was also assassinated in a neighborhood on the city's outskirts, the authorities said, and six policemen died when they were ambushed while driving to work. In Baghdad, the police found four dead bodies, two east of the Tigris River, two to the west. A roadside bomb exploded near an American patrol near Zawra park in western Baghdad, and a second bomb exploded in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, an Interior Ministry official said. He said it was unclear if there were any casualties. South of the capital, in Latafiya, a bomb targeting a joint Iraqi-American foot patrol killed one Iraqi soldier. North ofHilla, the authorities found the body of a man in his 20s floating in a small river. He had been stabbed to death. 57
Page 1 and 2:
KURDE INSTITUT DE PARIS Information
Page 3 and 4:
Contents : • WASHINGTON: THE TURK
Page 5 and 6:
n° 272 • November 2007 Informati
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
met Revue de Presse-Press Review-Be
Page 19 and 20:
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhev
Page 21 and 22: Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhev
Page 37 and 38: 7ED7 Revue de Presse-Press Review-B
Page 39 and 40: Revue de Presse-Press Reviezv-Berhe
Page 43 and 44: **» O et ^ Si SI SI Revue de Press
Page 51 and 52: chiites irakiennes. Revue de Presse
Page 71: t-H Revue de Presse-Press Review-Be
Page 81 and 82: 0 Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berh
Page 91 and 92: XeBonac Revue de Presse-Press Revie
Page 93 and 94: 7EH7 Revue de Presse-Press Review-B
Page 109 and 110: I I fi u Revue de Presse-Press Revi
Page 121 and 122: 4» Revue de Presse-Press Review-Be
Page 123 and 124:
A? Revue de Presse-Press Review-Ber
Page 125:
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhev
show all

Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?