U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday repeated his administration's backing for the Turkish military's offensive into northern Iraq to crack down on terrorists, during a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

  “Our cooperation on intelligence sharing will continue,” the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Bush as saying.

  The U.S. military provides the Turkish Armed Forces with real-time intelligence on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) hideouts in northern Iraq, as a result of the Bush-Erdoğan meeting on Nov.5 in Washington D.C. Turkish warplanes twice bombed the terrorists' camps on Dec. 16 and 22, penetrating 110 kilometers into Iraq.

  The two leaders reviewed Turkey's fight against terror and expressed satisfaction on the ongoing cooperation in regard to intelligence sharing, the Anatolia reported.  Bush repeated that the PKK was a common enemy of the United States, Turkey and Iraq, according to the news agency.

  Erdoğan, on the other hand, emphasized that that they will continue their struggle against terrorists with the cooperation of the United States and Iraq. He also underlined that Turkey backs Iraq's unity and stability and that “the sole target of the operation is the PKK.”

 US ambassador to Iraq backs Turk strike:

  Turkey has the right to defend itself against the PKK based in Iraq but must make sure it does not destabilize its neighbor, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Sunday.

  Ryan Crocker made the remarks before reports emerged claiming that Turkey had bombed PKK targets in northern Iraq on Sunday - for the third time in the past week.

  "Weve been clear on this. The PKK is a terrorist organization, it has carried out a number of lethal actions in Turkey from bases in Iraq, and the Turks clearly have a right to defend their country and their people," Crocker told reporters in Baghdad.

  "At the same time weve also said that we all have a pretty substantial interest in the stability of Iraq and none of us want to see operations pursued in a manner that can threaten basic stability inside Iraq," he said.

  Crocker said the issue posed by the PKK was going to "continue to be a complex equation" of coordination and communication between the governments of the United States, Turkey and Iraq.

  He said that the United States, Turkey and Iraq all wanted to see "an end to the capacity of the PKK to operate against Turkey from Iraq," but that this had to be done "in a way that does not create problems of stability inside Iraq."

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