With public pressure building for a military intervention against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, the United States and Turkey are to begin four days of crisis talks Friday that will help to define America's relationship with Turkey and possibly the future of Iraq as well

Bush's former envoy on the issue told McClatchy Newspapers to put the blame on the administration. He said its failure to keep its promises to Turkey was forcing that country to intervene in Iraq to subdue the Kurdistan Workers Party — the PKK in its Kurdish initials — which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization

The PKK, based in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, had run a separatist insurgency against Turkey for 20 years at a cost of an estimated 35,000 lives, but it began a cease-fire in 1999. After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when Kurdish leaders took political control of their region, PKK fighters began operations against soldiers and civilians in Turkey