LARA JAKES
AP National Security Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department said Thursday that it has met directly with a Kurdish political party in Syria that is linked to a guerrilla group considered by the U.S. and Turkey as a terrorist organization.
The weekend meeting in Paris with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, known as the PYD, is likely to further complicate relations between Washington and Ankara. The two countries are negotiating over how much Turkey is willing to contribute to a global coalition that aims to defeat the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq.
The Kurdish group is known as the PYD and is seen as a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Both aspire to create an independent nation for ethnic Kurds out of parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
The PKK has attacked Turkey for decades, and is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. is “certainly aware of the connection” between the PKK and what she described as some members of the PYD. She said the U.S. still considers the PKK as a terrorist group, and “we have the same concerns we’ve had for a long time.”
It was the first time U.S. officials have met with the PYD, although the two sides have communicated in the past through intermediaries.
The meeting focused on the ongoing fight that Syrian Kurds have given Islamic State militants as they seek to overtake land near Turkey’s border. The PYD is running the Kurdish fighters’ front in the Syrian city of Kobani, a month-long battleground that has riveted much of the world and been the site of more than 100 U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic extremists, including 14 on Thursday.
Psaki also predicted the U.S. would continue to engage with the PYD, although she said it was too soon to consider whether the Kurdish fighters would be given foreign help to battle the Islamic State.
The meeting “does not represent coordination — it represents one conversation,” Psaki said.
Turkey also has accused the PYD of coordinating with Assad, and refusing to join the Arab Syrian rebels in exchange for an autonomous zone in Syria. The PYD has denied the accusations.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Desmond Butler in Istanbul contributed to this report.
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