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Rice heads to Turkey for talks on Iraq border tensions

  • Story Highlights
  • Talks with Turkish, Iraqi leaders to focus on border tensions
  • Iraqi prime minister to talk with Turkish officials at weekend
  • Turkey threatening military offensive against Kurdish rebels in Iraq
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(CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is headed to Turkey, where she will meet with officials on the Iraq-Turkey border crisis.

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A protester throws darts at an image of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday.

She will arrive late Thursday in the capital Ankara, where she will meet with President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. She will then head to Istanbul to attend the Iraq neighbors' conference on Friday and Saturday.

The neighbors' conference is the latest in a series of meetings between Iraq, its neighbors and key international agencies and countries. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will lead the Iraqi delegation, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told CNN.

Al-Maliki plans to hold sideline talks with Turkish officials on the border crisis, al-Dabbagh said.

Officials from Iraq and Iraq's Kurdish region last week visited Ankara to discuss the issue with Turkish officials, and Kurdish region officials visited Baghdad to meet with Iraqi politicians on the matter Wednesday.

The volatile border has been the scene of conflict between Turkey and Kurdish separatist rebels based in the Iraqi Kurdish region, but so far there has been no major offensive by Turkish troops into Iraq.

Turkey has threatened to launch such an operation if Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish leaders fail to neutralize rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. United States and Iraqi diplomats, who oppose and fear such an eventuality, have been working to restrain them from doing so.

There has been fighting in southeastern Turkey that has spilled over to northern Iraq.

The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that the United States is sharing intelligence with Turkey, a NATO ally, in its conflicts with the PKK rebels.

"We are assisting by supplying them, the Turks, with intelligence, lots of intelligence," spokesman Geoff Morrell said. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

CNN's Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report

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