ISTANBUL—Turkey stepped up pressure on the United States to help curb attacks by Kurdish rebels from northern Iraq ahead of a conference of Iraq's neighbours and major powers on Saturday seeking to lower cross- border tensions.
The so-called "neighbours' conference," hosted by Turkey in Istanbul, was meant to focus on security inside Iraq but instead it is overshadowed by tensions between Turkey and Iraq over PKK attacks launched from the north of the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a two-day crisis trip to Turkey, has pressed Turkey to show restraint, fearing a big incursion would destabilise the region and complicate the U.S. mission in Iraq.
She has promised more action from the United States but provided scant details on how far Washington was prepared to go except to offer improved intelligence-sharing on the PKK.
Turkey is growing increasingly impatient at what it sees as U.S. foot-dragging over the threat from the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
"This is where the words end and action needs to start," Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said on Friday after meeting Rice.
No major announcements are expected during Rice's visit, or at the conference, partly because she does not want to upstage a meeting on Monday in Washington between Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President George W. Bush.
"For some concrete steps (on the PKK), we are still focused on the meeting between Bush and Erdogan on Nov. 5," a Turkish diplomatic source said.
Turkish diplomats said a declaration after Saturday's meeting was likely to include condemnation of all terrorism and applaud bilateral arrangements between Iraq and its neighbours.
Common Enemy
Rice, Babacan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari are set to hold talks on the sidelines of the conference to hammer out a strategy to fight what Rice says is a "common enemy."
"We are ready to take whatever steps to secure the border but it should come through a joint agreement between us and Turkey and within our capacity," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
"We know fully well that our neighbour Turkey is not willing to destabilise Iraq."
Dabbagh said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had a "very positive plan" he would introduce on Saturday regarding the PKK.
Iran, which is at loggerheads with Washington over both its nuclear ambitions and over Iraq, has offered to help ease tensions in northern Iraq.
But U.S. officials said Rice was unlikely to hold any substantive discussions with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on the sidelines of Saturday's meeting.
She sat diagonally opposite Mottaki at a dinner on Friday night held in a tented restaurant on the banks of the Bosphorous in Istanbul. Participants said the two diplomats appeared to avoid each other.
More than 20 ministers and other top officials from Iraq 's neighbours and major world powers are gathered at the Istanbul meeting, which follows on from another conference held in May in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Turkey had wanted Saturday's conference to focus on Iraqi security and to reassert the political and territorial unity of Iraq.
Ankara fears Iraq 's semi-autonomous Kurdish north will secede and act as a beacon for an estimated 15 million Kurds living in Turkey, mainly in its impoverished southeast region.
"As to northern Iraq , nobody is a stronger supporter of a unified Iraq than the United States," said Rice, trying to ease Turkish fears over an independent Kurdistan.
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