(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-02 22:15

ANKARA, Turkey - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States, Turkey and Iraq will counter any attacks on Turkey by Kurdish rebels operating out of northern Iraq.

Turkish demonstrators wave their national flag during a demonstration against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Hakkari. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday she would ask Turkey not to destabilise northern Iraq by launching a cross-border military strike against Kurdish rebels there. [Agencies]

She didn't specify just what that meant in speaking with reporters en route to diplomatic meetings in Turkey and the Middle East, and she warned against doing anything that might worsen the volatile situation on the Turkish-Iraqi border.

Rice was in Turkey's capital Friday and meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other high-ranking officials as part of an intense campaign to prevent Turkey from sending its troops across the border into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish guerrillas.

She planned to press the US case that Iraqi Kurds and Turkey should back away from an escalating conflict. So far the US has won no public promises to stand down.

She also will try to soothe lingering irritation by Turkey over a House committee vote last month that labeled as genocide the deaths of Armenians a century ago at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

Turkey has complained for months about what it contends is a lack of US support against the rebels known as PKK. The Turkish government has threatened a full-scale ground attack into northern Iraq if the US and Iraqi officials fail to do something about the rebels.

"We have a common enemy and we are going to act as if we have a common enemy, which means that we are going to work with our Turkish allies and the Iraqis" to have an effective way of dealing with the PKK, Rice said Thursday to reporters traveling with her.

Raids by the rebels and other fighting have left 47 people dead in Turkey since September 29, including 35 soldiers. The skirmishes were the latest in a conflict that dates back to 1984 and has seen nearly 40,000 people killed.

Rice rearranged a long-scheduled diplomatic visit to include stops in Ankara. The chief US diplomat was also seeing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and holding a three-way meeting with Iraqi and Turkish diplomats over the weekend.

Rice's trip places her in the breach between important NATO ally Turkey, the weak US-backed government in Baghdad and the self-governing Kurds in Iraq's oil-rich north.

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