Kurdish Envoy Rejects Claims about Iran's Offer of Military Aid to PKK

A prominent member of Iraq's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) strongly rejected the allegations about Iran's offer of military aid to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) against Turkey, and stressed that Tehran has always supported peace in the region.

"As Iranian officials have officially rejected this report before, I reject it, too, and I announce that Tehran has and does always lay emphasis on the establishment of tranquility and peace in the region," Nazzem al-Dabbaq, who accompanied a PUK delegation to Tehran this week, told FNA. A Monday report by the Turkish Milliyet daily claimed that Iran has offered heavy weapons and logistical support to the PKK if it does not withdraw from the Turkish territory as part of an ongoing settlement process with the Ankara government. Elsewhere, Dabbaq pointed to the Kurdish delegation's recent visit to Iran, and said that the two sides underlined further expansion of economic, political and trade ties between Iran and Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's wife, Hiro Ahmed Ibrahim, heading a high-ranking delegation, arrived in Tehran on Sunday. The visit by Ahmed Ibrahim, who is heading a senior delegation from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, took place at the official invitation of the Iranian government. Ahmed Ibrahim and her accompanying delegation held several meetings with senior Iranian officials and discussed bilateral ties and regional developments.