Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki said Tuesday that Iraq will expel Turkish rebels in its northern territory.
"We have taken a decision to close its offices and not allow them to work on Iraqi soil," Maliki said in a statement after the talks with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.
Maliki described the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) as a "bad terrorist organization."
"We are putting all our efforts to eliminate their terrorist activities that threaten Iraq and Turkey," he added.
Meanwhile, Maliki noted that the issue should be solved with peaceful means instead of military actions.
Babacan arrived Baghdad early in the day to find a solution for the PKK crisis.
Prior to his meeting with Maliki, Babacan talked with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari, and said his country does not want to see bilateral relations damaged over the PKK issue.
Zebari said that the two countries "have a common position to fight terrorism wherever it is. We will not allow any party or any group, including the PKK, to poison our bilateral relations."
The Turkish parliament approved on Oct. 17 a government motion backing a cross-border operation into northern Iraq for pursuing PKK militants. The rebels fueled the tension on Sunday by killing 12 Turkish troops in it latest assault.
The group, which has fought more than 20 years for a Kurdish country in southern Turkey, floated a cease fire Monday on the condition that the Turkish troops stop offensives and scrap the envisaged invasion of northern Iraq.
Babacan rejected the conditional cease fire, underlining that Ankara did not deal with a "terror" group.
Turkey has been blaming the Iraqi government for its failure of cracking down on the PKK fighters who use Iraq's northern Kurdish region as a launching pad for attacks against Turkish troops.
The Iraqi government opposes the likely Turkish incursion and is urging for dialogues to solve the problems.
The United States also is taking pains to dissuade Turkey from launching cross-border military actions, worrying such a move would destabilize the only peaceful territory in Iraq, which has seen rampant violence since the U.S.-led war in 2003.
Source: Xinhua
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