Iraq neighbors to counsel Turkey against invading

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iraq's neighbors are likely to urge Turkey to avoid any invasion to crush Kurdish rebel bases in Iraqi territory when they meet in Istanbul this weekend, even though they share Ankara's abhorrence of Kurdish nationalism.

Firm U.S. opposition to a Turkish intervention that might spread chaos in relatively stable northern Iraq will weigh much more heavily with decision-makers in Ankara, but regional pressure could act as an extra braking factor, analysts said.

"The message Turkey will get is to try to settle this in a different way, without intervention," said Joost Hiltermann, an Istanbul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Those meeting in Istanbul -- including the United States, Iraq and its six often mutually suspicious neighbours -- may condemn Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but will focus on diplomacy, not war.

"I don't think Turkey intends to invade," Hiltermann said. "It's using rhetoric to ratchet up pressure on the Americans and the Iraqi government to put pressure in turn on the Kurdish regional government to take certain steps to rein in the PKK."

Turkey, which has assembled up to 100,000 troops on the rugged Iraqi border for a possible assault on PKK sanctuaries, said this week it planned unspecified economic sanctions against the rebels and groups alleged to support them in northern Iraq.

Ankara is under intense domestic pressure to act after the PKK killed dozens of soldiers in recent weeks, but may await the outcome of talks between Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington on Monday.

Syria and Iran, so often accused by Washington of stirring trouble in post-invasion Iraq, have restive Kurdish minorities of their own, but may share an interest with the United States in discouraging Turkish military action in their backyards.

"Iran and the United States both regard the PKK as terrorists, but both want Turkey to show restraint," said an Iranian analyst in Tehran who asked not to be named. "If Iraqi Kurdistan is destabilized, it would be bad for Iran as well."

Iran has occasionally faced attacks from Iraq-based rebels and has shelled their positions across the border, but it has kept good relations with Iraqi Kurdish leaders and does not want all-out conflict to erupt in the area, the analyst said.

SYRIAN MEDIATION

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad voiced support for Turkish policy on the PKK in Ankara last month, but his information minister said Assad did not back any Turkish invasion of Iraq.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem said after meeting his Iranian counterpart this week they had agreed that "terrorism in Kurdistan does not just harm Turkey, but all surrounding countries". He said Syria was mediating between Turkey and Iraq.

Syria's relations with Turkey have flowered in recent years after Damascus dropped its once-staunch support for the PKK.

Erdogan might secretly welcome outside calls for restraint that he could use to fend off pressure from the Turkish military and nationalists for tough action, Hilterman argued.

He said Turkey risked a serious rift with its U.S. ally if it invaded northern Iraq without Washington's consent, and would also face European and regional criticism. It could get dragged into a long conflict in Iraq that might not uproot the PKK.

"For Turkey what is more important than the PKK question, or even the emergence of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq, is the overall integrity and stability of Iraq," Hiltermann added.

The Iraqi government, which depends on Kurdish parties for its survival, opposes any Turkish intervention. It has pledged to curb the movement and cut the supply lines of an estimated 3,000 PKK fighters on its soil, but not to fight them directly.

Masoud Barzani's Kurdish regional government has enraged Ankara by refusing a harsher crackdown, even though Iraqi Kurds have suffered in the past from Turkish reprisals for PKK raids.

Some analysts say Iraqi Kurds view the PKK as a negotiating chip to elicit Turkish flexibility on Kirkuk, where a referendum is due to decide on Kurdish claims to the disputed Iraqi oil city, until now excluded from the autonomous Kurdish area.

But Philip Robins, of St Anthony's College, Oxford, said such a bargain was implausible, given that stripping Kirkuk from Baghdad's rule, against the will of its Turkmen and Sunni Arab communities, would make an independent Kurdistan more viable.

Turkey fears that could spur the aspirations of its own estimated 20 percent Kurd minority and complicate the struggle to defeat the PKK, which has already cost nearly 40,000 lives.

"The PKK are a nasty tactical threat for the Turks, whereas an independent Kurdistan is a strategic threat," Robins added.

Iraq's neighbours began meeting in the early 1990s, without Iraqi participation, after Iraqi Kurds gained an autonomous zone outside Saddam Hussein's control following the 1991 Gulf War.

Regional players regularly reassured each other they had no expansionist goals in Iraq. "So the momentum...is very much against overt cross-border military incursions," Robins said.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Oweis in Damascus and Fredrik Dahl in Tehran)