ياشاسين آذربايجان - Long live Azerbaijan

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US congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday. In the article, from

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US Ambassador Ross Wilson yesterday rejected suggestions made by leading US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who has alleged that US institutions have had long-standing ties with the Iranian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

US congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

In the article, from the magazine’s July 7 and 14 issue, Hersh, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, discusses a highly classified presidential finding signed by Bush that, under US law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the country’s intelligence committees.

Listing names of certain groups in Iran that are benefiting from US support, Hersh said the CIA and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) and the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), a Kurdish separatist group.

“The Kurdish party, PJAK, which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States, has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years. (Iran, like Iraq and Turkey, has a Kurdish minority, and PJAK and other groups have sought self-rule in territory that is now part of each of those countries.) In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, a military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets,” Hersh wrote.

Wilson was reminded of the report yesterday when he participated in the launch of the US-funded Youth Innovation and Entrepreneur Project in Ankara.

“The US does not cooperate with PJAK. We have no relations with PJAK. We look at PJAK as a terrorist organization,” Wilson briefly told reporters.

Back in the autumn of 2006, Hersh wrote in The New Yorker magazine that Israel and the United States have been “working together in support of the PJAK.” Then, quoting a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, Hersh asserted that this was “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.”

In his Sunday report, Hersh said that “PJAK has also subjected Turkey, a member of NATO, to repeated terrorist attacks, and reports of American support for the group have been a source of friction between the two governments.”

PJAK is a militant Kurdish group based in northern Iraq. PJAK was originally set up as the women’s wing of the PKK and it later engaged in fighting with Iranian security forces. PJAK militants are also based in northern Iraq’s Kandil Mountains, which border Iran and are home to the headquarters of the PKK, while remaining active in Iranian territories. The US has been seeking new sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment activities, which the US alleges are intended for the development of nuclear weapons, a claim Iran denies.

The Turkish military has regularly attacked PKK targets in northern Iraq since December of last year, and the United States is supporting the operations by providing airspace clearance and intelligence about PKK movements in northern Iraq. In February, the Turkish military launched a major cross-border ground offensive, killing hundreds of PKK members and destroying a significant number of PKK camps near the border.

Iranian forces have often clashed with PJAK members in Iraqi border areas.

Last month, a senior Turkish general said Turkey’s military is cooperating with Iran by sharing information and coordinating strikes against the PKK based in northern Iraq.

“We haven’t done it [coordinated strikes] for one or two months, but we would do it if necessary,” Gen. İlker Başbuğ, head of the Turkish Land Forces and the second most powerful man in the Turkish military, told reporters on the sidelines of an international security conference held in İstanbul in early June.todayszaman

, Voice of a Nation

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