Turkey has the right to defend itself against Kurdish rebels based in Iraq but must make sure it does not destabilize its neighbor, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Sunday, according to AP. Ryan Crocker made the remarks before news emerged that Turkey had bombed Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Sunday _ for the third time in the past week. Turkish warplanes also bombed positions held by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, on Saturday and on Dec. 16. «We've been clear on this. The PKK is a terrorist organization, it has carried out a number of lethal actions in Turkey from bases in Iraq, and the Turks clearly have a right to defend their country and their people,» Crocker told reporters in Baghdad. He made the comments at about the time when Turkish jets were bombing an area about 85 kilometers (50 miles) north of the city of Irbil near the border with Turkey for about an hour and a half. «At the same time we've also said that we all have a pretty substantial interest in the stability of Iraq and none of us want to see operations pursued in a manner that can threaten basic stability inside Iraq,» he said. Crocker said the issue posed by the PKK was going to «continue to be a complex equation» of coordination and communication between the governments of the United States, Turkey and Iraq. He said that the United States, Turkey and Iraq all wanted to see «an end to the capacity of the PKK to operate against Turkey from Iraq,» but that this had to be done «in a way that does not create problems of stability inside Iraq.» Crocker added that Iraq had to build on some of the security it had achieved the last half of 2007.
