Month: February 2019

Opposition leader Juan Guaido has called on the international community to consider “all options” to resolve Venezuela’s crisis, a dramatic escalation in rhetoric that echoes comments from the Trump administration hinting at potential U.S. military involvement.

Guaido’s comments late Saturday came after a tumultuous day that saw President Nicolas Maduro’s forces fire tear gas and buckshot on activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes that left two people dead and some 300 injured.

For weeks, the U.S. and regional allies had been amassing emergency food and medical kits on Venezuela’s borders in anticipation of carrying out a “humanitarian avalanche” by land and sea to undermine Maduro’s rule.

With activists failing to penetrate government blockades and deliver the aid, Guaido announced late Saturday that he would escalate his appeal to the international community — beginning with a meeting Monday in Colombia’s capital with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of an emergency summit of leaders of the so-called Lima Group to discuss Venezuela’s crisis.

He said he would urge the international community to keep “all options open” in the fight to restore Venezuela’s democracy, using identical language to that of President Donald Trump, who in his public statements has repeatedly refused to rule out force and reportedly even secretly pressed aides as early as 2017 about the possibility of a military incursion.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also stepped up the belligerent rhetoric, saying on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”

A close Guadio ally, Julio Borges, the exiled leader of congress who is Guaido’s ambassador to the Lima Group, was even more explicit in urging a military option. “We are going to demand an escalation of diplomatic pressure … and the use of force against Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship,” he said Sunday.

It’s a prospect that analysts warn risks fracturing a hard-won coalition of Latin American nations who’ve come together to pressure Maduro’s socialist government. Most Latin American governments, even conservative ones like those in neighboring Colombia and Brazil, are on the record opposing a military solution and would face huge dissent should they back any military action led by the U.S., whose interventions in the region during the Cold War remain an open wound.

“These governments know they would face a huge tide of internal opinion greatly offended by a US-led invasion for historical and political reasons,” said Ivan Briscoe, the Latin America director for the Crisis Group, a Belgium-based think tank.

At the same time, though polls say Venezuelans overwhelmingly want Maduro to resign, almost an equal number reject the possibility of a foreign invasion to resolve the political impasse.

Resting at the foot of the Simon Bolivar bridge as work crews in Colombia began removing debris left by the unrest, Claudia Aguilar said she would support a military invasion but worries it would lead to more bloodshed.

The 29-year-old pregnant mother of three said she crossed illegally into Colombia on Sunday to buy a bag of rice and pasta for her family after Maduro ordered a partial closure of the border two days earlier.

“We’re with fear, dear God, of what will happen,” she said standing near the dirt trail she took to sneak across the border. “More blood, more deaths. The president of Venezuela does whatever he wants.”

In addition to weakening multilateral pressure against Maduro, analysts say the opposition saber rattling also risks undermining Guaido’s goal of peeling off support from the military, the country’s crucial powerbroker.

The 35-year-old Guaido has won the backing of more than 50 governments around the world since declaring himself interim president at a rally in January, arguing that Maduro’s re-election last year was illegitimate because some popular opposition candidates were barred from running.

But he’s so far been unable to cause a major rift inside the military, despite repeated appeals and the offer of amnesty to those joining the opposition’s fight for power.

“How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother? How many have kids in school without food,” he implored Saturday night, standing next to a warehouse where 600 tons of food and medicine have been stockpiled on the Colombian border. “You don’t owe any obedience to a sadist … who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the country needs.”

Maduro has deftly courted support from the military since becoming president in 2013, offering top commanders key posts in his cabinet, including the presidency of state-run oil giant PDVSA, the source of virtually all of Venezuela’s dollar earnings.

More than 100 members of the security forces, most of them lower-rank soldiers, deserted and took refuge inside Colombia during Saturday’s unrest, according to migration officials. But none of them was higher ranked than a National Guard major, and there’s been little suggestion any battalion or division commanders are willing to defect despite almost daily calls by Guaido and the U.S.

To be sure, there’s no indication the U.S. is planning a military invasion and Trump has made a habit of threatening friends and foes alike — China, North Korea and Canada among them — only to dial back the rhetoric down the road. Washington still has more diplomatic tools available, including extending oil sanctions to punish non-American entities that conduct business with Maduro’s government in much the way such sanctions strangled communist Cuba for decades.

Still, as early as 2017, Trump reportedly raised the possibility of a U.S. military incursion in Venezuela similar to the 1989 invasion that led to the ouster of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, both in an Oval Office meeting with then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other aides, as well as at a session with leaders of four Latin American allies on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, according to a senior administration official who has since left the White House.

In both cases Trump abandoned the war talk at the urging of his advisers and allies in the region. Prior to the current crisis, there was never any war planning by the military, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private conversations.

Still, momentum toward a confrontation seems to be building as hopes for a quick crumbling of Maduro’s government fade.

“It acts like a magnet,” said Briscoe of the possibility of a U.S.-led intervention. “As Plan A and B fail, it’s where everyone seems to be going. But the further you move in that direction, you weaken the multilateral approach and reduce the possibility that large parts of the military will turn against Maduro.”
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Trump Postpones New Trade Tariffs on China
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All the bill needed to become law was President Donald Trump’s signature. It would create a national archive of documents from civil rights cold cases. Students had been working on the project for years, families waiting on it for decades. But time was running out.

Legislation dies in the transition from one session of Congress to the next, and unless Trump acted, it would be lost.

So the students at New Jersey’s Hightstown High School did what teenagers do: They started tweeting at the president.

And not just Trump. They tweeted at his advisers, his staff and even Trump-friendly celebrities whose thousands of followers could carry their message to the White House.

As the deadline neared, Oslene Johnson, 19, was managing the project’s Twitter account from under the blankets in her bedroom and trying not to be discouraged.

“When you really look at it, it’s about providing closure for communities, families, and also as a country,” said Johnson, who has since graduated but still works with the students.

Imagine, the class considered, all the people, African-Americans mostly, who have lived with questions about what happened to their loved ones 50 years or more ago. The killings and injuries have long passed. The perpetrators are gone. But the families, she said, “they’re still with us.”

The students’ interest began in 2015, when teacher Stuart Wexler’s Advanced Placement government and policy class at Hightstown High was studying the civil rights movement. They couldn’t believe that in America, so many criminal cases involving racial violence and death could remain unsolved.

Srihari Suvramanian, 17, a senior, said in an Associated Press telephone interview with the class: “It’s just atrocious that these individuals have gotten away with crimes committed decades ago, for so long, even though the majority of Americans know it’s wrong.”

He added: “We think it’s very important to provide a sense of closure. Even if we can’t get a full sense of closure, maybe provide some answers to the people that were denied justice.”

The students crowdsourced a list of cases, filed Freedom of Information Act requests and then waited. Research on old cases often runs into dead ends, and they could imagine the difficulties that families go through trying to get answers.

They turned their attention to Congress.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which collects records at the National Archives from the assassination, provided a model for the legislation they wanted. They took bus trips to Washington to find supporters. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., was among the first to sign on, inspired, his office said, by the work and the possibility it held.

Then Democrat Doug Jones won a Senate seat from Alabama in December 2017. They had already reached out to Jones, the U.S. attorney who won convictions after reopening the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing case from 1963 in Birmingham.

Six months after he was sworn in as the first Democratic senator from Alabama in a generation, Jones stood on the Senate floor and introduced the bill that would become the Civil Rights Cold Case Collection Act. The students watched from the gallery above.

“Justice can take many forms,” Jones said. Reconciliation can be a potent force, he said. “After all this time, we might not solve every one of these cold cases, but my hope is, our efforts today will, at the very least, help us find some long overdue healing and understanding of the truth.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was presiding in the chamber that day, has said he was so moved that he told Jones he would sign on as a co-sponsor. Cruz helped bring Republicans on board. By December, in the final days of the congressional session, the bill unanimously passed the Senate and was approved in the House, 376-6. From there, it was off to the president’s desk.

But the students worried the bill would expire when the new Congress convened in January.

“We went on a mad, desperate scramble to get the president to sign the bill,” said James Ward, a 17 year-old senior who helped mobilize the student body, class by class, “to take out their phones and tweet.”

In Wexler’s classroom, students posted photos of Trump’s “midnight advisers” — aides, media celebrities — and started putting “X’s” through the ones they had reached out to. “We were tweeting at as many people as we could,” Suvramanian recalled.

He was finishing class one afternoon when he dashed off an email to Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax and a Trump ally. “He got back to me within 30 minutes,” the teenager said. After a short exchange, another note came back, “He said, ‘I dropped a message to the president around 10 minutes ago and I really hope your bill gets signed into law.’”

Even with the new Congress starting the next day, the actual deadline for signing the bill was still a week away — the night of Trump’s border security address to the nation amid what became the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Johnson, a student leader when the project started, tried not to lose hope as she tweeted. She had graduated and moved on, as had many other students. There have been dozens in all, over the past several years, who had been involved in the project.

Then word came. Jones’ office told Wexler, who told the students: Trump had signed the bill, which focuses on unsolved criminal cases from 1940 until 1980.

Johnson cried.

“The families could now, with access to information, at least know something about what happened,” she said.

Along with Trump’s signature came a lengthy signing statement of potential concerns about the process for review and public release of the documents, but also support for Congress to fund the effort. Ruddy confirmed he had reached out to the White House, impressed by the students. He thinks the president would have been, too.

Margaret Burnham, a law professor at Northeastern University and director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, said what Wexler and his class did was “nothing short of amazing.”

“The creativity was not so much in framing potentially effective legislation, but in strategizing how to get it through the Congress,” said Burnham, who has worked for years on these issues and similar efforts in Washington. “That’s where Stuart and his students, over several classes, were just dogged — and creative, incredibly creative — in their ability to persuade Congress, people on both sides of the aisle, of the meaning and continuing urgency and significance of this issue.”

Tahj Linton, 17, said he hopes other Americans understand the power they have to shape political outcomes. “If we can start to solve some of the racial problems that were never really closed in the past decades or 50 years or so, maybe we can start to work on the ones that are happening today and make a difference about it,” he said.
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North Korea leader Kim Jong Un was on a train Sunday to Vietnam for his second summit with President Donald Trump, state media confirmed.

Kim was accompanied by Kim Yong Chol, who has been a key negotiator in talks with the U.S., and Kim Yo Jong, the leader’s sister, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported. TV footage and photos distributed by the North’s state-run news agency showed Kim inspecting a guard of honor at the Pyongyang station before waving from the train.

Late Saturday, an Associated Press reporter saw a green-and-yellow train similar to one used in the past by Kim cross into the Chinese border city of Dandong via a bridge.

The Trump-Kim meeting is slated for Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi.

Their first summit last June in Singapore ended without substantive agreements on the North’s nuclear disarmament and triggered a months-long stalemate in negotiations as Washington and Pyongyang struggled with the sequencing of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and the removal of U.S.-led sanctions against the North.

Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret. It could take more than two days for the train to travel thousands of kilometers (miles) through China to Vietnam.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry announced Saturday that Kim would pay an official goodwill visit to the country “in the coming days” in response to an invitation by President Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party.

In his upcoming meeting with Trump, experts say Kim will seek a U.S. commitment for improved bilateral relations and partial sanctions relief while trying to minimize any concessions on his nuclear facilities and weapons.

While Kim wants to leverage his nuclear and missile program for economic and security benefits, there continue to be doubts on whether he’s ready to fully deal away an arsenal that he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.

Last year, North Korea suspended its nuclear and long-range missile tests and unilaterally dismantled its nuclear testing ground and parts of a rocket launch facility without the presence of outside experts, but none of those steps were seen as meaningful cutbacks to the North’s weapons capability.

While North Korea has repeatedly demanded that the United States take corresponding measures, including sanctions relief, Washington has called for more concrete steps from Pyongyang toward denuclearization.

Hanoi has been gearing up for the summit with beefed-up security. Officials say the colonial-era Government Guest House in central Hanoi is expected to be the venue for the Trump-Kim meeting, with the nearby Metropole Hotel as a backup. Streets around the two places have been beautified with flowers and the flags of North Korea, the U.S and Vietnam.

Workers were also putting final touches on the International Media Center. Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry says some 2,600 members of the foreign press have registered for the event.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has announced a traffic ban along Kim’s possible arrival route.

The Communist Party’s mouthpiece Nhan Dan newspaper quoted the Department of Roads as saying the ban will first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger, and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170-kilometer (105-mile) stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7 p.m. Monday to 2 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a complete ban Tuesday on all vehicles from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The People’s Committee in Lang Son province, where the Dong Dang railway station is located, issued a statement Friday instructing the road operator to clean the highway stretch and suspend road works, among other things, on Feb. 24-28 as “a political task.”
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Saudi Arabia has replaced its ambassador to the United States, a royal decree announced Saturday, as the fallout over journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder tests relations between the two allies.

Princess Reema bint Bandar was appointed the kingdom’s first woman envoy to Washington, replacing Prince Khalid bin Salman, who was named vice defense minister.

Prince Khalid is the younger brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler who also serves as the defense minister.

The reshuffle comes as ties with Washington are under strain following Khashoggi’s murder last October in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

After initially denying they knew anything of Khashoggi’s disappearance, the Saudis finally acknowledged that a team killed him inside the consulate, but described it as a rogue operation.

U.S. lawmakers have threatened to take tougher action against Saudi Arabia over the brutal killing amid claims that the crown prince was personally responsible.

The Saudi government has strongly denied he had anything to do with the murder of Khashoggi who was a columnist with The Washington Post.

The killing refocused attention on a Saudi-led military coalition’s bombing campaign in Yemen, which is gripped by what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Earlier this month, the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly to end American involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war effort in neighboring Yemen, dealing a rebuke to President Donald Trump who has publicly thrown his support behind the crown prince.

U.S. lawmakers this month also said they were probing whether Trump was rushing to sell sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to please corporate supporters who stand to profit handsomely.

The House of Representatives committee has voiced fears that Saudi Arabia could convert U.S. expertise into making a nuclear bomb, heightening already severe tensions with regional rival Iran.
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A powerful typhoon about 170 miles (274 kilometers) off the U.S. territory of Guam is lashing the Pacific island with high winds and heavy rain.

The Nation Weather Service says Wutip was upgraded to a category 4 super typhoon as it gained intensity. Winds near the storm’s center were estimated Sunday at 155 mph (249 kph).

Civil defense officials say Guam will experience tropical storm force winds between 40-45 mph (64-72 kph) and rainfall of up to 6 inches (15.24 centimeters). Power outages were reported.

Guam residents were advised to stay inside until the storm passes.

Wutip was slowly moving northwest, away from Guam. The weather service said the storm could intensify to a category 5 typhoon before it begins to weaken late Sunday.
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A California couple pleaded guilty Friday of torture and years of abuse that included shackling some of their 13 children to beds and starving them to the point it stunted their growth.

David and Louise Turpin will spend at least 25 years in prison after entering the pleas in Riverside County Superior Court to 14 counts that included cruelty toward all but their toddler daughter, and imprisoning the children in a house that appeared neatly kept outside, but was festered with filth and reeked of human waste.

The couple were arrested in January 2018 when their 17-year-old daughter called 911 after escaping from the family’s home in Perris, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.

The children, who ranged in age from 2 to 29 at the time, were severely underweight and hadn’t bathed for months. They described being beaten, starved and caged.

David Turpin appeared stoic as he pleaded guilty, but Louise Turpin’s face turned red and she began crying and dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

They ‘ruined lives’

The two face prison terms of 25 years to life when they are sentenced April 19, Riverside District Attorney Mike Hestrin said. 

“The defendants ruined lives, so I think it’s just and fair that the sentence be equivalent to first-degree murder,” Hestrin said.  

Hestrin said he was impressed by how resilient the children were when he met with them, though he said the guilty pleas were important to spare them from having to testify at a trial. 

The couple had faced dozens of additional counts if they went to trial. During a preliminary hearing, a judge tossed out a single count involving their youngest daughter, finding she was the only child who didn’t suffer abuse.  

The Turpins had led a mostly solitary but seemingly unremarkable life until the teenager jumped from a window and ran for help.  

David Turpin, 57, had worked as an engineer for both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Louise Turpin, 50, was listed as a housewife in a 2011 bankruptcy filing.  

The family led a nocturnal existence and slept during the day, which kept them largely out of sight from neighbors in a middle-class subdivision. 

In a recording of the 911 call played in court last year, the girl who escaped said two younger sisters and a brother were chained to their beds and she couldn’t take it any longer.  

‘Help my sisters’

They will wake up at night and they will start crying and they wanted me to call somebody,'' she said in a high-pitched voice.I wanted to call y’all so y’all can help my sisters.”  

The intervention by authorities marked a new start for the children, who lived in such isolation that the teen who called for help didn’t know her address and some of her siblings didn’t understand the role of the police when they arrived at the house.  

Two girls had been hastily released from their chains when police showed up, but a 22-year-old son remained shackled.  

The young man said he and his siblings had been suspected of stealing food and being disrespectful, a detective testified. The man said he had been tied up with ropes at first and then, after learning to wriggle free, restrained with increasingly larger chains on and off over six years.  

Authorities said the children were deprived of food and things other kids take for granted, such as toys and games, and were allowed to do little except write in journals.  

Although the parents filed reports with the state that they home-schooled their children, the oldest child had completed only the third grade and a 12-year-old couldn’t recite the full alphabet. 

An investigator testified that some suffered from severe malnutrition and muscle wasting, including an 11-year-old girl who had arms the size of an infant’s.  

The kids, whose names all begin with the letter J, were rarely allowed outside, though they went out on Halloween and traveled as a family to Disneyland and Las Vegas, investigators said. The children spent most of their time locked in their rooms except for limited meals or using the bathroom.  

All the children were hospitalized immediately after they were discovered. Riverside County authorities then obtained temporary conservatorship over the adults.  

Happy not to testify

Jack Osborn, an attorney who represents the seven adult children in probate court, said they were happy the guilty plea spared them from testifying.  

“They are relieved they can now move forward with their lives and not have the specter of a trial hanging over their heads and all the stress that would have caused,” Osborn said. 

The adult children are all living together, attending school and getting healthy while leading lives similar to those of their peers. He said they value their privacy. 

The social services agency tasked with overseeing the younger children declined to comment on their cases, citing confidentiality laws. 

Jessica Borelli, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychological science at University of California-Irvine, said children who suffer such trauma face many challenges but she has seen people make miraculous recoveries. The guilty pleas from their parents, she said, could help, especially since many abuse survivors struggle with feelings of self-doubt. 

It is a pretty clear affirmation of how they were mistreated,'' she said.If there is any part of them that needs validation that how they were treated was wrong and was abuse, this is it.” 

The children have not spoken publicly, though they will be allowed to speak at the sentencing if they choose to, Hestrin said. 

I was very taken by their optimism, by their hope for the future, for their future,'' Hestrin said.They have a zest for life and huge smiles and I am optimistic for them, and I think that’s how they feel about their future.” 
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The play-by-play announcer who calls University of Iowa men’s basketball games was suspended Friday for the rest of the season for referring to the University of Maryland’s Bruno Fernando as “King Kong” during a game.

Hawkeye Sports Properties, the multimedia rights manager for University of Iowa athletics, announced the suspension of Gary Dolphin just hours before the 21st-ranked Hawkeyes were to host Indiana University. 

Fernando had 11 points and 11 rebounds, including a go-ahead putback with 7.8 seconds left, to help No. 24 Maryland beat Iowa 66-65 on Tuesday night in Iowa City. In describing the game’s closing moments, Dolphin said the 6-foot-10-inch, 240-pound African-American who was born in Angola “was King Kong at the end of the game.”

The reference was to a movie monster, resembling a huge gorilla, that has appeared in films and other media since 1933.

This was Dolphin’s second suspension of the season.

He sat out two games after being caught on an open microphone criticizing Iowa guard Maishe Dailey in a win over the University of Pittsburgh in late November. Coach Fran McCaffery called Dolphin’s comments about Dailey “inexcusable.”

Jim Albracht will replace Dolphin for the rest of the season. Bobby Hansen, Iowa’s color commentator, will continue in that role.

Dolphin, a fan favorite who is also Iowa’s football play-by-play man, apologized in a statement released Friday.

“During the broadcast, I used a comparison when trying to describe a talented Maryland basketball player. In no way did I intend to offend or disparage the player,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my inappropriate word choice and offer a sincere apology to him and anyone else who was offended. I will use this as an opportunity to grow as a person and learn more about unconscious bias.”

Iowa’s athletic department released a statement supporting Dolphin’s suspension, saying it “values diversity and is committed to creating a welcoming environment for all members of its campus community.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that his decision to leave a small number of U.S. troops in Syria did not constitute a reversal of his plan to withdraw all troops from the country.

“I am not reversing course,” Trump told reporters at the White House. 

“It’s a very small, tiny fraction of the people we have,” he said, referring to the more than 2,000 American troops in Syria who are supporting Kurdish forces fighting the last of the Islamic State group.

Administration officials said the United States would leave several hundred troops in Syria while the rest would be withdrawn. 

Preventing ‘resurging’

A senior U.S. defense official, using an acronym for Islamic State, told VOA that the troops would remain in Syria to help “enable local forces to keep ISIS from resurging.” The official said the presumption was that the several hundred troops would be part of an international peacekeeping force.

Trump said Friday, “We have had tremendous success in defeating the caliphate.” He added the United States “can leave a small force along with others … whether it’s NATO troops or whoever it might be, so that it [the caliphate] doesn’t start up again.”

In December, Trump, anticipating the defeat of IS in Syria, made a surprise announcement that all U.S. forces would be out of Syria by the end of April. In doing so, he confounded many of America’s European allies and angered some of his own allies in Washington.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, called it one of the “dumbest” ideas he’d heard. 

According to Graham, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan agreed that a complete U.S. withdrawal from Syria could lead to a resurgence of Islamic State and a Turkish assault on Kurdish forces, and could give Iran an advantage inside Syria.

Reluctance among European leaders

European leaders have said they will be reluctant to fill the security gap when U.S. forces leave.

But Shanahan said U.S. allies had not rejected the idea of staying in Syria as an observer force.

He met Thursday at the Pentagon with a representative of one of the European allies, Belgian Defense Minister Didier Reynders, who said there had not been a blanket refusal from all U.S. allies to take part in a Syrian force.

“We are waiting for preparation of the withdrawal of U.S. troops and we are waiting now for more discussions about the way to prepare something,” Reynders said.

Shanahan told reporters Friday that “our mission remains unchanged in terms of the defeat of ISIS.” He said, “We’re working towards stabilization and to enhance the security capability of local security forces.” 

Phone call to Erdogan

Trump spoke by telephone Thursday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The White House said they agreed to keep working on creating a “potential safe zone” inside Syria, which would keep Kurdish forces safe from possible a Turkish attack.

America’s Kurdish allies in Syria are concerned they would face Turkey’s wrath following a U.S. withdrawal.

Turkey says the Syrian troops are allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy inside Turkey.   

Turkey regards the PKK as a terrorist group.

VOA’s Carla Babb at the Pentagon, Patsy Widakuswara at the White House and national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. 
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