"Let them say what they want to say, but they should not use the language of threats," the president of the Kurdish autonomous region, Massud Barzani, said. "We wish to speak the language of friendship and they should respond in kind."

"We reject the language of threats."

The Turkish army on Friday issued its latest warning to Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region threatening a response "at the highest level" following an incident in which it said its soldiers were harassed at a checkpoint.

In recent weeks, Turkey has publicly discussed the possibility of sending troops to confront Kurdish separatist rebels based in neighbouring Iraq in the wake of a May 22 bomb attack in Ankara allegedly carried out by a separatist sympathiser.

"Iraqi land must be respected and we will not become a scene of military operations," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. "We don't want to harm our neighbours but we don't want them to interfere in Iraqi lands.

"We refuse the idea that Iraq be a site from which to launch attacks against neighbouring countries, and if there is a problem we should not resort to arms because that would only aggravate tensions," he added.

With a large and restive population of Kurds of its own, Turkey has been eyeing the growing independence of Iraq's Kurds with concern and accuses the region of housing bases for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, has fought for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.