Ties with U.S. will be intact,Turkey insists

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From combined dispatches

ANKARA, Turkey -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul on Monday reviewed touchy regional issues that have led to coolness between their countries, but Mr. Gul said ties between the two NATO allies, described by both parties as a "strategic partnership," will remain intact.

One of the reasons for the chill in bilateral ties is the presence in northern Iraq of an estimated 5,000 militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that Turkey holds responsible for a civil conflict that claimed about 37,000 lives in the country's southeast from 1984 to 1999.

Clashes tapered off after a rebel truce in 1999, but there has been a surge in violence since June, when the rebels declared an end to the cease-fire, saying Turkey had not responded in kind.

Trilateral talks sought

"We are going to have, we hope in the near future, a trilateral meeting here to discuss the whole question of the PKK," Mr. Armitage said after the talks. He did not elaborate. Ankara wants U.S. forces in Iraq to curb PKK's activities.

Another bone of contention is Ankara's unhappiness with the Kurds' expulsion of Turkish-speaking Iraqi Turkmen from oil-rich Kirkuk. The Kurds themselves had been expelled from the area by Arabs under Saddam Hussein.

"There have been many segments of Iraqi society who have had their situation changed by force," Mr. Armitage told reporters. "The Turkmens are, of course, in this category and the Kurds themselves have been forced out, of particularly Kirkuk, to some degree.

"These are things that have to be corrected in the transitional administrational law ... to redress these wrongs for all those who are dispossessed," he said.

Kurdish break feared