Reuters.com: U.S. wants to deal "aggressively" with Kurdish PKK

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U.S. wants to deal "aggressively" with Kurdish PKK

President George W. Bush told Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan that the United States wants to deal more aggressively with cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the White House said on Tuesday.Several thousand members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, are believed to be hiding in the mountains of mainly Kurdish northern Iraq, from where they slip across the border to attack Turkish police, troops and other targets. Turkey blames the PKK for more than 30,000 deaths since the start of its campaign for a Kurdish homeland in 1984.

Diplomats say Turkey is frustrated that the United States accepts Israel's right to launch attacks against its enemies over the border in Lebanon while remaining opposed to Ankara taking unilateral action against the PKK in Iraq. The United States, like Turkey and the European Union, views the PKK as a terrorist organization but says broader security problems in Iraq prevent the kind of full-scale military crackdown on the group that Ankara demands.