Turkey calls for Iraq to hand over all PKK rebels

A villager carries a rifle as he walks in a village near the northern Iraqi city of Zakhu in the mountainous Iraq-Turkey border region October 25, 2007. Holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq, Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas have grabbed world attention as rarely before as Turkey mulls whether to launch a cross-border incursion against their bases.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey wants Iraq to hand over all members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said on Friday.

Cicek, speaking in a televised interview as Iraqi and U.S. officials met Turkish officials in Ankara in a bid to stop Turkey launching an incursion into northern Iraq to tackle the militants, also said Turkish air forces had hit targets in northern Iraq but there had been no full land incursion.

"Everyone (PKK members in northern Iraq) there is guilty. They are criminals at least for being a member of a terrorist organization," Cicek said. "We want all of them to be handed over," he said, adding that Ankara had given Iraq a list of PKK militants.

The central government in Iraq has little clout in the mainly Kurdish autonomous north of Iraq, and the interior chief of the autonomous region was blocked from attending the talks by Ankara.