October 30, 2007 (LPAC)--The fact that the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), is openly supported by the U.S.-backed Kurdish regional government in Iraq, is more then an open secret. Even today's International Herald Tribune (IHT), in a feature article on the PKK-Iraq-Turkish crisis, reports the blatant nature of this US support. Reporting from Raniya, a town right on the edge of the PKK stronghold in northern Iraq, IHT describes how supplies are freely allowed to cross a government checkpoint.

Former American Ambassador to Turkey, Mark Parris, now at the Brookings Institute, remarks, "That couldn't have happened without their permitting them to be there. That's their turf. It's as simple as that."

IHT goes on to report how the PKK-"linked" Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (KDSP), operates freely in Raniya and Sulaimaniya.

A little research on this party reveals that it was organized in 2002 as the Iraqi branch of the PKK, so as to be able to run in the Iraqi elections. It ran in both the regional and national elections. Its leader is Fayik Muhemed Ahmad Golpi, who, after the U.S. 2004 elections, sent a letter of congratulations to President George W. Bush, which read in part, "in the occasion of your reelection for the presidency of USA, I congratulate you, Republican Party, and American People...." Golpi went on to urge Bush to complete the neo-conservative grand design for the Middle East: "I hope you expand your efforts for changes and democratic transformations in the Middle East and put more emphasis on implementing the Grand Middle-East project...," as reported by the Kurdistan Observer Nov. 10, 2004.

Another article on the KDSP, by Jon Gorvett in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, goes into more detail. Golpi told an interviewer, that his group are no longer hardline Marxists, but, "in an era of globalization, you cannot ignore realities... After the liberation of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein, so many things changed,--especially the issue of the USA."

Continuing, he then reports how the PKK organized the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), which is the anti-Iranian branch, and since then, "the region's newspapers routinely report stories of meetings between the U.S. and the PKK."

Finally, Gorvet reports that when the Turkish government expressed concern over ethnic Turkomans in Kirkuk, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Mesut Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan, said, "Turkey is not allowed to intervene in the Kirkuk issue. It if does, we will interfere in Diyarbakir's issues and other cities in Turkey."