Remarks Following a Meeting With Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

First of all, on behalf of President Bush and Secretary Rice we thank the Prime Minister and the Turkish Government for our alliance and for the excellent work that we are doing together in Afghanistan and in both of our efforts to try to be helpful to the people of Lebanon and, of course, on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

We had a very good conversation about the difficult situation in Iraq. I assured Prime Minister Erdogan that the Untied States is entirely sympathetic to the people of Turkey for the losses the Turkish people have suffered because of these vicious attacks by the PKK. And, of course, the United States will meet its commitment to try to work effectively with the Turkish Government and the Iraqi Government to try to deal with this very serious problem of PKK attacks on Turkey.

Secretary Rice has asked General Ralston to return to this region shortly to work on this problem with the Turkish Government and the Iraqi Government. And we hope that the action taken yesterday at the Mahmour Camp is the beginning of a serious effort to close that camp and to make sure that Northern Iraq is not used by the PKK to attack into Turkey itself.

Finally, we had a good discussion on the question of Cyprus and it is certainly the view of the United States Government that we hope that with the arrival of a new Secretary General of the United Nations, the international community led by the U.N. can continue its efforts to find a solution to the problem of Cyprus. And the United States will continue to be actively involved with all parties concerned towards that objective.

We will be spending tomorrow meeting with Foreign Minister Gul and officials of the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s office to re affirm the strong alliance between Turkey and United States and to discuss all of these issues that are of such concern to both of our Governments. Thank you very much.

A couple of questions?

QUESTION: (inaudible)

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: The question was about American and Turkish discussions about the PKK and the situation in Northern Iraq. I spoke to that, and what I told the Prime Minister on behalf of my Government is that the United States will continue to act to support Turkey. We do not recognize the PKK, we have acted to try to shut down PKK offices all around the world, we have used our influence with friendly countries. We are looking for a solution to the problem of the PKK attacks on Turkish soldiers and Turkish civilians. We side with Turkey. We support Turkey, and we are sympathetic to turkey on this issue.

QUESTION: Turkey is objecting to holding a referendum in Kirkuk this year. What is the U.S. position?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: There was a conversation on this issue. There’ll be more conversations I’m sure tomorrow in the extended at meetings with the Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Minister. We understand the importance of this issue. We understand how sensitive it is. We understand that, obviously, there are discussions underway between Turkey and the Iraqi authorities. But this is a very important and sensitive issue for the Iraqis themselves, and the United States obviously has to defer to the Iraqis because they are sovereign in that country. This is part of the constitutional arrangements. So we’ll continue the discussions and we will be very pleased to listen to the Turkish authorities, but it is going to be most important for the Iraqi authorities to deal with this question in the first place. Thank you.