Turkish traffic

In what looks like a rare victory for Bush administration diplomacy, the New York Times reported today that the Turkish government has agreed to wait before launching military strikes against Kurdish separatists from northern Iraq blamed for attacks in southern Turkey. Tensions hit the crisis point today when Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers in an ambush, just four days after Turkey's parliament approved military action against the P.K.K., the Kurdistan Workers Party, who operate in mountains of Northern Iraq in the self-administered Kurdish region. But a timely phone call from Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has apparently kept the region from boiling over. Turkey wants the U.S. and its Kurdish allies in Iraq to clamp down on the separatists, who seek to unite with Turkey's Kurdish minority. The U.S. wants to avoid a break with Turkey, which permits the U.S. to use bases and fly over its territory to keep troops supplied in Iraq.