Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed Bush's commitments following crisis talks here between the two leaders, but said his country had no plans to withdraw some 100,000 troops massed on the border with Iraq.

Bush insisted that the United States stood shoulder to shoulder with its NATO ally Turkey over a spate of deadly cross-border attacks by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"PKK is a terrorist organization. They're an enemy of Turkey. They're an enemy of Iraq. And they're an enemy of the United States," Bush told reporters after the White House meeting.

The president announced a new three-way military partnership grouping the United States, Turkey and Iraq to improve the sharing of real-time intelligence on the PKK.

Washington was also looking at cutting off money flows to the Kurdish rebels, and their ease of travel, he said.

As Pakistan sinks deeper into political crisis, Bush would be loath to see any escalation in tensions between Turkey, another crucial anti-terror partner, and US allies in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

As the two leaders met, hundreds of banner-waving ethnic Kurds including many in traditional dress rallied outside the White House with chants of "stop the Turkish invasion."

"We are not after war. We have a mandate from the Turkish parliament to conduct an (anti-PKK) operation," Erdogan said at Washington's National Press Club, describing himself has "happy" as a result of his talks with Bush.

The prime minister said Turkey was awaiting concrete action following assurances by Iraq's government that it is clamping down on the PKK.

"And so I will trust this process and we will see what takes place as this process moves along," he said through an interpreter, while declining to say whether Turkey might now review its massed deployment of troops on the border.

"We will continue to take those precautions," he said.

Ahead of his meeting with Bush, Erdogan warned "the Turkish people have run out of patience."

But in an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa, Erdogan also said Turkey could call off its threatened incursion if "the Iraq government took urgent and permanent measures against the PKK in Iraqi territory."

Earlier Monday, Iraqi Kurdish regional prime minister Nechirvan Barzani proposed four-party talks to end the PKK incursions -- with his government as one of the participants along with Ankara, Baghdad and Washington.

"This is a transnational issue, complicated by ethnic ties, and no party can find a solution on its own," Barzani wrote in the Washington Post.

But PKK leader Murat Karayilan called on the Iraqi Kurdish leadership to stand by its ethnic kin.

"No action (against the PKK) can be successful ... as long as we, the Kurds, preserve our unity," he told the Firat news agency, considered to be a mouthpiece of the PKK.

Erdogan was being accompanied by Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul on his brief visit to Washington, before he heads to Rome for talks with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Despite Iraq's announcement of new steps to curb the PKK separatists, Babacan said military options "remain on the table."

Some observers fear that US influence with Turkey has been undermined by a push in Congress to label the Ottoman Empire's World War I massacre of ethnic Armenians as "genocide."

But fierce pressure from both Turkey and the White House appears to have paid off for now, with its Democratic authors agreeing late last month to shelve a House debate on the resolution.

"We view this with cautious optimism," Erdogan said, thanking the Bush administration and House members who had spoken out against the bill for fear of its damage to sensitive ties with Turkey.

"We are ready to settle accounts with our history, but our documents indicate that no such genocide took place. In fact our values do not permit our people to commit genocide," the Turkish leader said.