Turkey took the first steps towards a deployment of troops in northern Iraq in pursuit of rebel Turkish Kurds yesterday, despite days of diplomatic pressure by the United States.

The Cabinet of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, signed a motion calling for parliamentary authority to mount military action after a six-hour meeting, held amid intense public pressure, to retaliate against rebel Kurd attacks in Turkey and disgust at a US congressional vote accusing Ottoman Turkey of genocide against Armenians.

Turkey believes that the US and Iraqi authorities have failed to take action to control rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who staged a deadly ambush against Turkish troops last week. The Turkish-Cabinet motion, which is expected to gain Parliament’s approval tomorrow, would give a legal basis to any number of military incursions into neighbouring northern Iraq over the next year, with PKK fighters as their target. About 3,000 are believed to be hiding in the mountains there.

“Our desire is that we will not have to use this motion,” said Cemil Cicek, a government spokesman, in a statement less belligerent than the past few days of blustering by leading Turkish political and military figures. He insisted that Turkey had no designs on Iraqi territory and criticised Iraq for failing to crack down on the PKK.

Eric Edelman, a former US Ambassador to Ankara, and Dan Fried, Assistant Secretary of State, flew to Turkey at the weekend to hold emergency talks, making an unscheduled departure from the party accompanying Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to Moscow. An Iraqi deputy state minister is expected in Turkey today.

The US Administration is opposed to the resolution passed last week by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee branding as genocide the mass killing of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War. Turkey says that large numbers of Christian Armenians and Muslim Ottoman Turks died during the war, many during forced relocations, but it refuses to sanction the idea that the intention was to eliminate the Armenians.

Such is Turkish sensitivity on the issue that Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel laureate, was tried for “insulting Turkishness” after claiming that a million Armenians were killed. Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian editor who was convicted under the same law, was murdered this year by a nationalist gunman.

Mr Edelman and Mr Fried said that they came to Turkey to express regret at the resolution, but President Bush and his Administration have made little headway against Democrats backing further passage of the Bill.

Mr Erdogan had long resisted calls to send troops into northern Iraq and has expressed doubts about the military effectiveness of such an exercise. However, he is now under intense pressure to show that Turkey will not be intimidated.

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