Kurdish

Iraqi leaders complained Monday that Turkey had not coordinated with Baghdad before sending dozens of warplanes to bomb Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq the day before. U.S. officials confirmed that they had prior knowledge of the attack. In Washington, a Pentagon official said the U.S. military had "deconflicted the airspace" in Iraq for the strikes -- that is, the United States made sure that Turkey would have clear use of the skies to enable the bombings.

Opposition is beating the war drums; Turkish public is demanding an operation; Bush is offering an upgraded three-way ‘coordinators' scheme; winter is setting in... Difficult times to make difficult decisions for Erdogan. It must be rather uncomfortable for Recep Tayyip Erdogan being the prime minister of the country nowadays.

PKK Kurdish rebel group and its sister organization, PEJAK, have been receiving support from the US and Israel, an American journalist claims.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's divided political leadership, in a rare show of unity, skewered a non-binding U.S. Senate resolution approved in Washington, D.C., last week that endorses the decentralization of Iraq through the establishment of semi-autonomous regions. Also on Sunday, the U.S. Embassy joined the Iraqi politicians - both Shiite and Sunni - in criticizing the resolution. The measure's advocacy of a relatively weak central government and strong Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish regions has touched a nerve in the Iraqi political arena, stoking fears that the United States is planning to partition Iraq.

The US Senate has passed a bill, suggesting Iraq's partition into a federation of ethnically divided regions, urging Iraqi officials to agree.