(dpa) - Turkish political and military leaders on Thursday refused to give US Defence Secretary Robert Gates an exact date for the withdrawal of Turkish troops fighting Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, with Chief of General Staff Yasar merely saying that they would leave in the "shortest time possible."
"The shortest time possible is a relative concept. For some it may be one day or for others it might mean a year," Buyukyanit was quoted by NTV private television as saying before talks with Gates in Ankara.
Earlier, Gates said that Turkey should quickly wrap up its military incursion against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq.
In order to stop "terror," not just military but also economic and political initiatives must be made, he said.
Gates was quoted by CNN-Turk television as saying after talks with Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul that the Washington wanted the operation to be "short and precisely targeted."
Gonul said that while Turkey had no plans to become an occupying force, "we will stay for as long as necessary."
The defence minister reiterated Turkey's stance that the sole target of the operation was Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) fighters based in northern Iraq.
With heavy fighting continuing Thursday in and around two Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) camps in mountainous northern Iraq, Gates was later scheduled to meet President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Buyukyanit.
According to a statement released by the Turkish military on Wednesday 230 PKK fighters, 24 Turkish soldiers and three state- employed village guards have been killed since Turkey launched "Operation Gunes" on the night of February 21.
A senior member of the PKK said its forces had killed 18 Turkish soldiers and wounded two on Thursday in a mountainous area in northern Iraq, media reports from Baghdad said.
"We (the PKK) managed to kill three Turkish soldiers and wound another two when our forces set an ambush in the Dojka mountains near Zab," Ahmed Damis, a senior PKK official, told the Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
He added that the PKK killed another 15 Turkish troops during clashes with Kurdish forces in the eastern Imadiya area.
With access to the region extremely limited, none of the casualty figures could be independently verified.
Up to 10,000 Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq the night of February 21 in an operation designed to destroy the PKK's ability to launch attacks inside Turkey. The Turkish military estimates there are between 4,000 to 5,000 PKK guerrillas based in the region.
Ankara blames the separatist group for the deaths of more than 32,000 people since the early 1980s when the PKK began its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated south-east of Turkey.
Baghdad has said it sympathizes with Turkey concerning the PKK but that the incursion will not solve the problem, and has called on Ankara to call off the operation.
The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.