BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq fears that a prolonged Turkish incursion into northern Iraq could trigger clashes between Turkish troops and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga security forces, the country's national security adviser said on Monday.

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The Kurdish term pesh merga - ''those who face death'' - once telegraphed all one needed to know about the fighters born in the shadows of the Kandil Mountains. The Kurds of Iraq fought against Saddam Hussein for decades, gunning for his ultimate downfall.

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(CNN) -- A battalion of about 800 militia forces moved closer to the Turkish border over the weekend, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the latest information from the region. art.turkey.ap.jpg Turkish soldiers on patrol near the Turkey-Iraq border.

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Who are the Kurds? Most people in the west don't know too much about them-- I admit that I didn't until I did some reading....

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On May 30, the Coalition held a ceremony in the Kurdistan town of Erbil to mark its handover of security in Iraq's three Kurdish provinces from the Coalition to the Iraqi government.

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I still think that Kurdistan may be the seam that unravels on us for good in Iraq. Even if we're to find some way of straightening out the rest of the mess, Turkey's relations with the PKK and the Peshmerga could screw up everything.

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Kurdish leaders have decided to deploy their own militias in the current fighting in Baghdad where government troops aided by U.S. forces have launched yet another campaign to secure the restive city.

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[on]11 November 2004 . . . in one of the least publicised disasters of the US occupation of Iraq, insurgents captured the city as the police and army deserted en masse The Independent's Patrick Cockburn - reports that the Iraqi resistance is preparing for an encore.

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