Articles About Terrorist Activities

Fulya Ozerkan-Umit Enginsoy, Ankara/Washington

U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Ross Wilson denied allegations that his country has been collaborating with PEJAK, or Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, to take down the Iranian regime from inside.

“The United States is not cooperating with PEJAK. We do not have any relationship with PEJAK. We consider it a terrorist group,” Wilson told reporters in Ankara yesterday.

U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have ties with the Iranian arm of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, as part of the Washington administration’s clandestine operations inside Iran aimed at destabilizing the religious regime there, according to a published report.

Congress late last year agreed to a request from President George W. Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, and granted up to $400 million for this purpose, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine’s latest issue.

He based the information on interviews with current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.

The covert activities involved support of the Sunni Arab, Kurdish and Baluchi ethnic minority groups and other dissident organizations, Hersh said. They also reportedly include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

In addition to a fundamentalist Baluchi group and the Sunni Jundallah, “the CIA, and special operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK,” Hersh said.

Turkey has been fighting the northern Iraq-based PKK, which attacks Turkish targets.

State Dept denied PEJAK ties before

“Reports of American support for the group (PEJAK) have been a source of friction between the two governments (Ankara and Washington),” Hersh said.

“PEJAK, which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States, has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years,” he said. “In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, a military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PEJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets.”

The U.S. State Department has denied earlier claims suggesting ties between the United States and PEJAK. Since December, the United States is providing the Turkish military with actionable intelligence to strike PKK targets inside Iraqi territory.

Although Tehran is seen as Washington’s top adversary in the Middle East, a regime change in Iran is not the United States’ official policy. Bush says he wants to resolve the nuclear conflict through diplomacy, but that “all options are on the table.”  

Hersh said Defense Secretary Robert Gates and many top-level military commanders opposed air strikes against Iran.  

“A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, ‘we’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America,’” he said.  

His article drew reactions from administration officials, who denied that U.S. forces were engaged in operations inside Iran.

“I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else,” U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker told CNN.

‘Erdoğan’s visit a positive step forward’

Meanwhile, Wilson also commented on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s upcoming visit to Iraq, saying that it is unquestionably a positive step for the Turkish-Iraqi relationship. “We encourage dialogue between the two countries. Turkey played a very important and supportive role to the government of Iraq and to the Iraqi people to help them become a strong, stable and secure society. I am sure the prime minister’s visit will be an important step forward,” he added. 

When asked on possible meetings of Erdoğan with Kurdish authorities, Wilson said, “We certainly encourage dialogue with all Iraqi groups including the Kurds.”

Source: www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=108678