Turks cross Iraq border, clash with Kurds

BAGHDAD – Several hundred Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq on Tuesday and engaged in clashes with Kurdish guerrillas, Turkish military officials said, as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Iraq to tout security gains.

Rice encountered frustration from some Iraqi Kurdish leaders upset that the U.S. is allowing Turkish forces to operate inside Iraq. Turkey is combating the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which says it is fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey and uses northern Iraq as a base.

Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, a semiautonomous body that administers three predominately Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq, refused to attend a meeting with Rice on Tuesday.

After a stop in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, about 120 miles south of where Turkish troops launched their incursion, Rice told reporters in Baghdad that the United States, Turkey and Iraq have a common interest in “stopping the activities of the PKK” but cautioned that “no one should do anything that threatens to destabilize the north.” The group is accused of killing more than 50 Turkish security personnel and civilians in recent months in cross-border raids.

Rice’s visit was designed to highlight the overall reduction in Iraq’s violence following a surge of U.S. forces this year, as well as to push for political reconciliation. But that message was largely overshadowed by the Turkish incursion in a region considered to be Iraq’s most stable.

Standing at Rice’s side, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, said the Turkish attack was a “limited incursion” taking place “high in the mountains.” Officials said the Turkish troops withdrew by the end of Tuesday.

In a statement on its Web site, the Turkish military said ground forces based close to the border crossed “a few kilometers” into northern Iraq after spotting a group of guerrillas trying to infiltrate Turkey overnight, according to the Associated Press.

Also Tuesday, a quarterly Pentagon report to Congress said that security in Iraq has improved consistently and dramatically in nearly ever major category over the last three months, the most sustained period of such gains in nearly two years.