Turkish army chief insists on incursion into Iraq

The head of the Turkish armed forces insisted Wednesday on the need for a military incursion into northern Iraq to hunt down Turkish Kurd rebels based there, but said he would require the government's green light to do so.

"I cannot say that we will go in and finish off the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers' Party), but a cross-border operation will deliver a big blow," against the rebel group, Chief of General Staff General Yasar Buyukanit told a televised news conference at a commando training camp in the southwestern town of Egirdir.

"It will be very useful," he said.

Buyukanit said the army needed a "political directive" from the government for such an operation.

"All cross-border operations have a political target," Buyukanit said. "Military planning starts with a political directive."

Since April, Buyukanit has been calling for a strike against PKK rebels based in the Kurdish-held autonomous north of Iraq where, Ankara says, they enjoy free movement and obtain weapons and explosives for crossborder attacks against Turkish targets.

Turkey also accuses local Kurdish leaders of tolerating and even supporting the PKK rebels.

More than 37,000 people have died since 1984 when the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish east and southeast.