Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey sent 700 soldiers into northern Iraq and had 20 tanks ready to follow them in an assault on Kurdish militants who have carried out cross-border attacks.Turkish forces penetrated 8 kilometers (5 miles) into Iraq's majority-Kurdish north late yesterday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on the party's Web site. The troops remained in Iraq today, with the tanks prepared to enter Iraq and join the operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, the party said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk today and will meet with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in Baghdad, U.S. Embassy spokesman William Schmonsees said in statements e-mailed from Baghdad. She will also meet Talabani in Baghdad, state television reported. Rice had arrived in the Iraqi capital, Agence France-Presse reported.
The U.S., alarmed over the prospect of a conflict in a relatively peaceful area of Iraq, had been working with Turkey to prevent an incursion. Turkey says Iraq and the U.S., which classifies the PKK as a terrorist group, haven't done enough to stop the group from using northern Iraq as a base.
A spokesman for Turkey's military declined to comment today on the Iraqi report of an incursion. A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry wasn't immediately available.
Authorized by Erdogan
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government on Nov. 28 authorized the army to attack PKK targets inside Iraq after the Kurdish rebel group stepped up its activities.
Turkish warplanes bombed bases used by the PKK in Iraq's Zap, Hakurk and Avasin regions and the Qandil mountains on Dec. 16, Turkey's military said on its Web site.
Turkish forces have been fighting the PKK, which is seeking autonomy for Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast, for more than 20 years in a conflict that has cost almost 40,000 lives. About 30 million Kurds live in the mountainous regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. They make up the Middle East's largest stateless ethnic group.
Iraq's Kurds may provoke further Turkish wrath by pushing to extend their self-governing territory southward into the oil fields dominated by the contested city of Kirkuk. The region gained autonomy after the 1991 Gulf War, as coalition forces protected the north from attack by Saddam Hussein's troops.
The question of whether Kirkuk should be controlled by the Kurdish autonomous region may be settled in a proposed referendum.
The Bush administration wants the United Nations to help settle Kirkuk's status, while Turkey prefers a ballot among all Iraqis to decide the city's future. Iraq's constitution calls only for the residents of a disputed area to vote in any referendum on its future.
Tensions between the government in Baghdad and the Kurdish region have been heightened over the signing of oil contracts by the Kurds without the consent of the Iraqi leadership.
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