Iraqi Kurdistan leadership wants PKK pullback

ARBIL, Iraq: Kurdish rebels of the PKK should take their war with Ankara out of Iraqi Kurdistan to prevent Turkish air strikes from causing civilian casualties, the region’s leadership said on Saturday.
“The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) must keep the battlefield away from the Kurdistan region in order for civilians not to become victims of this war,” the office of the region’s president Massud Barzani said in a statement.
Turkey has carried out hundreds of raids against the Kurdish rebel group’s mountain bases on either side of the Iraqi border.
The PKK itself has admitted to only a handful of deaths in its ranks but the official Turkish news agency Anatolia on Saturday put the figure at around 260, although it gave no source.
Several civilians have been killed and wounded in the air campaign, which Ankara launched a week ago following a wave of attacks in Turkey.
Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party has often been at odds with the PKK but has long allowed its fighters to take shelter from the Turkish army in remote mountain regions on the Iraqi side of the border.
In the same statement, the presidency also urged the PKK and the Turkish government to resume a peace process which the recent violence has all but shattered.
“The Kurdistan presidency is clear in demanding that the PKK keep its military bases away from the region in order not to give the Turkish government any justification when it bombs civilians,” Kifah Mahmoud, a Barzani adviser, told AFP.
“If the PKK did not have bases inside the region, Turkey would not be bombing civilians,” he said.
“The region’s presidency has asked the PKK to take its forces out, especially since there is an agreement between the Iraqi and Turkish governments allowing Turkish forces to enter the Iraqi side.”
Ankara and Baghdad signed a “hot pursuit” agreement in the era of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein, allowing both sides to hunt down Kurdish rebels 15-km into each other’s territory.
Mahmoud said the agreement was still valid. Barzani’s party has enjoyed good relations with Turkey, a major investor and trading partner for the autonomous region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government later issued a statement taking a softer line, simply demanding both sides shift their battle away from populated areas.
“We urge Turkey to refrain from bombing villages and populated area in the region, at the same time we urge the PKK to keep its forces, bases and institutions away from villages and populated areas,” the statement said.