(Adds quotes, details) ISTANBUL, June 5 (Reuters) - Turkey's military is cooperating with Iran by sharing information and coordinating strikes against PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq, a senior Turkish general said on Thursday. "We haven't done it (coordinated strikes) for one or two months but we would do it if necessary," General Ilker Basbug, head of the land forces and the second most powerful man in the Turkish military, told reporters at a security conference. The Turkish military has regularly attacked Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebel positions this year in the mountains of northern Iraq, where several thousands are believed to be holed up. Turkish troops conducted a large-scale incursion across the border in February. Iranian forces have often clashed in Iraqi border areas with rebels from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the PKK. Analysts say PJAK has bases in northern Iraq from where they operate against Iran. The European Union and the United States are keen for NATO-member Turkey, which says it is defending itself against a terrorist organisation, to keep its attacks in northern Iraq limited to avoid destabilising Iraq and the wider region. The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of establishing an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. An estimated 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. (Reporting by Zerin Elci; writing by Paul de Bendern; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
U.S. Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multi National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) spokesman, speaks to the media during a news conference at the International Zone in Baghdad June 4, 2008. REUTERS/Eduardo ...
