ISTANBUL - Turkey and Iran should work together against Kurdish terrorists and their cooperation could include military efforts, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Reza Bageri said here Friday.
"Turkey and Iran must cooperate on the PKK issue," Bageri told a group of reporters here, referring to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
PJAK, a PKK-linked organisation, is active in Iran and has conducted deadly attacks against the Iranian security forces.
Asked whether cooperation should include military efforts, Bageri said: "All kind of cooperation is possible."
But he stopped short of backing Turkey's threats of military action in northern Iraq, where the PKK and PJAK have bases from which they launch cross-border attacks in both Turkey and Iran.
"We are against all terrorist groups. We are against the use of the territory of neighbours for any threats," he said.
Bageri was in Istanbul with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to attend a multilateral conference on security in Iraq, scheduled to begin Friday night and continue Saturday.
He said Iran will present "a very important plan for Iraq and the Iraqi people" at Saturday's talks, but gave no details other than saying that it included "elements" concerning security.
The United States accuses Iran-linked groups of funding, arming and training extremists to fight US troops in Iraq, a charge Tehran denies.
Participants in the Istanbul meeting include foreign ministers and senior government officials from Iraq, its neighbours, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks with Turkish leaders in Ankara Friday in a bid to dissuade Ankara from military action in northern Iraq. She was scheduled to arrive in Istanbul later in the day.
Before flying to Istanbul, Mottaki met Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan in Ankara on Thursday evening, after Baghdad asked Tehran to help resolve the crisis with Turkey.
11/02/2007 14:52 GMT