BAGHDAD—The Iraqi government should take steps to arrest Kurdish guerrillas when they come down from their mountain hideouts and to restrict the resupply of rebel bases, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad said on Thursday.
Ryan Crocker said Washington had told the Iraqi government that its statements condemning a surge in rebel attacks in Turkey were important, but more needed to be done, with "concrete, definitive steps to demonstrate Iraqi seriousness".
But it was unrealistic to expect Iraqi security forces to confront separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters in their bases in the inaccessible Qandil mountains bordering Turkey, he told reporters in Baghdad.
"They are there for a reason. That is really hard to get to. It is not realistic to expect Iraqis are going to march up that mountain and take on the PKK in their positions and arrest their leaders," he said.
"But it is reasonable to expect Iraqis to use all means that they have to monitor PKK movements, including roads and airports ... and then be prepared to act if they come down south from the mountain into Iraqi government territory.
"This is not just reasonable, this is an expectation."
Turkey has massed troops on the Iraqi border and says it will launch a major incursion into Iraqi territory if the government and U.S. forces fail to crack down on the PKK rebels.
The Iraqi government has called the PKK a terrorist organisation, said its fighters should leave Iraq and vowed to cooperate with its neighbour to halt their activities.
But at the same time it has said the rebels are beyond reach in their remote mountain bases, where they have fought off past Turkish offensives and attacks by Saddam Hussein's army.
The Qandil mountains are in the largely autonomous Kurdistan region, where Baghdad's government has little sway. Preoccupied with quelling bitter sectarian violence, the government and U.S. forces have paid scant attention to the PKK's activities.
Crocker said a high-level Iraqi delegation that travelled to Ankara on Thursday for talks on averting a Turkish incursion needed to propose specific measures to deal with the rebels.
He said the Iraqi government should have a "leader lookout list" and "take steps to stop the movement of people and goods into that area".
"Folks heading up that way need to be stopped, folks coming down need to be picked up," he said.
He said Washington, while expressing its sympathy and support for Turkey over the recent PKK attacks, was also stressing that "decisions have to be carefully taken and consequences have to be we weighed".
"We have cautioned that military action could be dangerously destabilising, he said.
