A Kurdish rebel group on Tuesday rejected calls by Iraq's president to stop fighting against Turkey and leave Iraqi territory. President Jalal Talabani made the call Monday during a joint press conference with visiting Turkish President Abdullah Gul. Talabani, a Kurd, said it was in Iraq's interest to remove fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Part, or PKK, from Iraqi soil. He also called on the rebels to lay down their weapons. “Jalal Talabani doesn't have the authority or the will to utter such words, and we don't take orders from him,” PKK spokesman Ahmed Deniz said. “We are publicly warning Talabani that such statements will lead to grave consequences and much of the achievements of (Iraq's) Kurds will be lost,” Deniz said. PKK rebels, who stage cross-border raids into Turkish territory from sanctuaries in northern Iraq, have been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast since 1984. Attacking Turkey Gul urged the prime minister of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region on Tuesday to take a clear position against Kurdish separatist rebels using Iraq as a base to attack Turkey. Gul met Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani for talks in Baghdad, the first time a Turkish leader has agreed to meet with an official from the the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which has enjoyed de facto autonomy from Iraq since 1991. Turkey accuses the KRG of not doing enough to crack down on rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who operate out of northern Iraq to launch attacks on southeastern Turkey. “I told him (Barzani) explicitly that the PKK terrorist organisation and their camps are ... in your region (and) you need to take a clear position against them,” Gul said. “Once the PKK is eliminated there are no bounds to what is possible: you are our neighbors and kinsmen.”
