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Turkish PM urges Iraq to cooperate against Kurdish rebels

ANKARA, Feb 29, 2008 (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey and Iraq should not allow Kurdish separatists to "poison" bilateral ties and urged Baghdad to help purge the rebels from northern Iraq.

"We should not allow the presence of the terrorist organisation there to poison our ties," Erdogan said in a televised address, hours after the Turkish army wrapped up a week-long ground offensive against PKK rebels in northern Iraq.

The separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) "is not only Turkey's enemy, but also an enemy of Iraq and a destabilising factor and a threat for the region," he said.

"Turkey and Iraq must work together to get rid of this problem -- there is no other way," he added.

Erdogan pledged that purging the PKK from northern Iraq would remove obstacles to better political and economic ties and help boost Iraqi prosperity.

"We want Iraq to be peaceful and stable more than anyone else," he said.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has long used camps in the mountains of northern Iraq as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

Ankara has accused the Iraqi Kurds, who run the autonomous northern Iraq, of tolerating and even supplying the PKK with weapons and explosives.