The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Istanbul

Turkey said Saturday that military options "remain on the table" to strike Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq despite new measures by Baghdad to clamp down on the separatists.

The United States scrambled to avert the threat of a cross-border Turkish attack as the crisis dominated a multilateral conference on the turmoil in Iraq in Istanbul, attended by 17 regional countries and major Western powers.

"All instruments remain on the table for Turkey," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan when asked whether fresh Iraqi pledges to curb the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) had satisfied Ankara.

"Whether they will be used or not, or when they will be used, is a matter of strategy."

Turkey has massed an estimated 100,000 troops along its frontier with Iraq amid mounting PKK violence against the Turkish security forces.

Iraqi officials said Saturday they were setting up new checkpoints in northern Iraq to try to restrict the movement of PKK rebels and cut their logistical supplies.

The Iraqi Kurdish authorities, accused by Ankara of harbouring and even aiding the rebels, began to shut down the offices of a PKK-linked political party.

Ankara, however, wants Iraq to urgently close PKK camps in the mountains of northern Iraq and arrest and extradite the group's leaders.

A senior Turkish government official said Ankara had seen no new element in the measures Iraq said it had enacted.