Beirut: A Syrian Kurdish official accused Turkey on Monday of stalling on an agreement to allow Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to cross into Syria to help end the siege of the border town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al Arab.
Saleh Muslim, co-chair of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said that the Peshmerga have been ready to go into Kurdish-defended Kobani for three days.
“But we don’t know what is going on between them and Turkey. The delay is because of Turkey,” said Muslim, whose party’s armed wing, the YPG, has been battling Daesh militants in Kobani for a month.
Turkey has been reluctant to join the US-led coalition against Daesh, an Al Qaida offshoot. But after pressure from its Western allies, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said last Wednesday that some Peshmerga fighters from Iraq would be allowed to transit through Turkey to Kobani.
A Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the parties involved were still discussing details of the deal.
“Turkey is part of these discussions. In principle we said yes to the transfer of the Peshmerga, the rest is just details, so it is not right to say we are blocking,” he said.
The Iraqi Kurdish region’s parliament voted last week to deploy some of its Peshmerga forces, who have been fighting their own battle against Daesh in northern Iraq, to Syria.
They will not engage in direct combat in Kobani but instead provide artillery support, a Kurdish government spokesman said on Sunday.
“They should have arrived yesterday. Until now it seems Turkey is making some difficulty. We don’t know exactly what is happening because there is a kind of deal between [the Peshmerga] and Turkey,” Muslim said by telephone.
Iraqi Kurdish officials cited technical issues for the delay but gave no further details.
