(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-03 17:29

ISTANBUL - Iraq warned that no one can stop Kurdish rebels in Iraq's remote northern border region from attacking Turkey, as tensions over the assaults overshadowed a major international meeting on Iraq's future.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, left, and US ambassador to Turkey Ross Wilson leave Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office after a meeting in Ankara, Friday, Nov. 2, 2007. [Agencies]

"It's not in our capacity" to capture the rebels, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. "It's not even in the capacity of Turkey."

Turkey is hosting the session, which includes about two dozen nations and organizations pledged to support Iraq's US-backed government economically and politically.

The guest list includes Iran and Syria, two nations the United States blames for furthering instability and violence inside Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat across from Iran's foreign minister at an opening dinner Friday night, but the two had no private meeting - something Iraq and many other Mideast nations had hoped for.

Until now, Iraq's border with Turkey to the north was not considered much of a problem for US forces or the fragile government in Baghdad. That changed over the past month with an onslaught of attacks by the Kurdistan Workers Party rebel group, known by the initials PKK.

The deaths of more than 40 people over the past month have pushed Turkey to threaten a major offensive across the Iraq border unless Iraq and the United States can neutralize the rebels first. The Turkish anger came on top of umbrage over a US congressional vote labeling the 1915 deaths of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks a genocide.

Rice urged calm and cooperation in a string of meetings Friday with top Turkish leaders who insisted that Turkey will do what it must to stop the rebel attacks.

She made a similar argument later in a separate meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose government has said it will not stand for any cross-border assault. Al-Maliki agreed with Rice that the PKK is a terrorist threat, but he does not have the forces or political strength to do much about it.

The Kurdish rebels operate in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region, an oil-rich sector. Turkey, the United States and the Baghdad central government all say any meaningful action against the rebels must come at least partly from the Kurdish regional government. Turkey accuses the Iraqi Kurds of helping the PKK or at least looking the other way, and the United States has said the Kurds are "inactive" against the PKK.

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