[NYTr] Coming Up Friday: Hamstrung Rice and Turkey Jambalaya

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Reuters - Oct 31, 2007
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30243228.htm

PREVIEW

Rice faces tough battle on Turkey trip

by Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Turkey will push U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice this week to follow through on promises to help
eradicate Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq but experts say the top U.S.
diplomat's hands are tied.

Rice arrives in Ankara on Friday for talks with Turkey's leaders,
before going to Istanbul for a meeting of Iraq's neighbors and major
powers that is also expected to be dominated by tensions between Iraq
and Turkey.

"I can't imagine what she is going to be able to do in terms of pulling
a rabbit out of the hat that would enable her to leave claiming that
some progress had been made," said Mark Parris, a former U.S.
ambassador to Turkey.

Turkey has threatened a military incursion into northern Iraq, from
where Kurdish rebels have launched attacks, but has so far heeded
Washington's call for restraint.

Washington fears an incursion by Turkey -- a NATO ally and key conduit
for supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- would further
destabilize an already volatile region.

Rice has promised unspecified "concrete action" and is prodding Iraq's
government, particularly the Kurdish regional authorities in northern
Iraq, to curb the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, by closing its bases
and arresting leaders.

"We are looking to the Iraqi government to act, to act to prevent
terrorist attacks, and ultimately to act to dismantle that terror group
that's operating on their territory," State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack said.

But while Rice has promised U.S. action and urged the Iraqis to do
more, defense officials have made clear there is no appetite for U.S.
military action against the PKK.

Major-Gen. Benjamin Mixon, in charge of U.S. forces in the north of
Iraq, said when asked last week what he planned to do to curb the
activities of the PKK: "Absolutely nothing."

Turkey expert Sam Brannen, international security fellow at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, said Mixon's comments went
over "like a lead balloon" in Turkey.

"I think she (Rice) is going in really hamstrung in what she can
achieve on this trip," said Brannen.

The view in Turkey is that the United States is not prepared to act
against the PKK for fear of alienating the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG) in Iraq, experts say.

TWO GIRLFRIENDS

"They are frustrated that the U.S. has not done more. I don't see
anything changing," said Zeyno Baran of the Hudson Institute.

She likened it to the United States having two girlfriends -- Iraq and
Turkey -- and Ankara pushing Washington to choose between them.

Rice's visit coincides with increasingly anti-U.S. sentiment in Turkey
and residual anger after a resolution passed by a U.S. congressional
committee this month that called the 1915 massacre of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks a genocide.

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is set to meet President George
W. Bush in Washington next week and Rice's sessions in Turkey are aimed
at smoothing out problems before then.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center put the U.S. favorability
rating in Turkey at 9 percent versus 52 percent in 2000. Turks now see
the United States as the single biggest threat to their nation's
security.

"The fact is that Secretary Rice is going into the jaws of a real
credibility problem and is up against some real narrow parameters in
terms of what she can do to overcome that credibility problem," said
Parris, now with the Brookings Institution.

Several experts suggest Rice should start laying the foundation for
dialogue between Iraq and Turkey over the PKK.

"The best interlocutors are the Iraqi Kurds but the Turks are so
petrified by the possibility that the Iraqi Kurds will go independent
and then act as a beacon for the Turkish Kurds that they don't even
recognize the KRG," said former State Department official Henri Barkey.

But a senior State Department official said Rice was unlikely to offer
herself as a go-between.

"She will consult on our latest thinking and planning and next steps to
advance that cooperation which has to be between Iraq and Turkey," he
said, adding that "next steps" involved classified information and he
could not be more specific.

Barkey, who is now at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said the
United States had poorly handled the problem with the PKK and Rice's
best shot of success was cold weather, when rebels usually hunkered
down and skirmishes declined.

"Rice should be praying for snow," said Barkey.