by Aamer Madhani

As Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that he may send troops into Iraq “at any time” to crack down on the Kurdish rebel group PKK, a senior State Department official expressed displeasure today over Iraqi Kurdish leaders failure to clamp down on the terrorist organization.

David Satterfield, the State Department’s Iraq coordinator, put the onus on the Kurdistan Regional Government in heading off a Turkish incursion against the guerilla fighters in northern Kurdistan.

“In the first instance, responsibility for dealing with this threat lies with the Kurdish Regional Government leadership,” Satterfield told Defense Writers in Washington this morning. “This organization is based in and operates from the KRG territory. We look to the Kurdish leadership to take steps in their own interest against this group.”

“And I must tell you, this is not anything which the Kurdish leadership is not aware of from our own voice. We are not pleased with the lack of action undertaken against PKK…..They [KRG] should act and they should act now in meaningful fashion against the PKK in order to prevent an action the consequences of which could be harmful to them, to Iraqi interests and certainly to our broader interests.”

Satterfield’s comments came as Erdogan ratcheted up the rhetoric about a possible incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan. At a news conference in London today, Erdogan said that he was prepared to halt exports into Iraq and was prepared to launch a military strike into Iraqi Kurdistan.

Erdogan also called for the U.S. to take more divisive action to stamping out the PKK, a militant organization that both U.S. and EU classify as a terrorist organization. The PKK, also known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, for years has been fighting for an independent Kurdish homeland that includes southern Turkey.

"The Iraqi government should know that we can use the power vested in us to conduct a cross-border operation at any time," Erdogan said.

In Baghdad, Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari pledged that Iraq would take action against the PKK to restrict members movement. Zebari met on Tuesday with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babachan.

But Satterfield’s criticism of the Kurds seems to reflect the White House’s frustration with Kurdish leaders seeming reluctance to deal with the PKK.

Jalal Talabani, Iraq's President and a Kurd, said on Monday that the, "the handing over of PKK leaders to Turkey is a dream that will never be realized."

Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, also a Kurd, said during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Monday that demands on KRG and Iraqi government "could well be a recipe for an open-ended conflict in which we will not win and will basically destabilize the only stable part of Iraq."

Satterfield would not say if there is a red line where U.S. military intervention would be considered.

“We are not looking at worst cases, at inevitabilities,” Satterfield said. “We are working to try to stop a further escalation, further deaths by innocent Turkish citizens, further potential destabilization….We don’t believe cross-border operation, we don’t believe military operations inside Kurdish Region Government territory are intrinsically stabilizing or helpful. We think they have the opposite impact. But the consequences of continued acts of terror against innocent Turkish citizens are also enormously destabilizing and unhelpful.”