Turkey raises concern over Kurdish flag issue in Iraq

ANKARA, Turkey Turkey expressed its concern Wednesday to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the decision by the leader of the Kurdish region of Iraq to adopt a separate flag, calling it "extremely dangerous."

Turkish leaders meeting with Annan told the secretary-general that the issue would heighten tensions in Iraq, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Namik Tan, said at a news conference.

"This is extremely dangerous," Tan said.

The Foreign Ministry remarks were seconded later Wednesday by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said in an interview with CNN-Turk television that any move by the Kurds in Iraq toward separatism created the possibility for even more bloodshed in that unstable country.

"When something like this starts in Kirkuk," a major Kurdish-majority city in northern Iraq, "this will continue with even greater violence. Then it won't just be sectarian clashes, ethnic clashes will begin too," the prime minister said.

Turkey, which shares a border with Iraq, has its own large and restive Kurdish population and is wary of any separatist moves among Iraqi Kurds, fearing they could encourage Turkey's own Kurdish population to join their Iraqi counterparts in a fight for an independent state.

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