WASHINGTON — Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, has suffered a setback in her effort to reduce the fall-out from Turkey’s recent airstrike in Iraq when a prominent Kurdish leader refused to meet her. On a brief trip to the country in the wake of the Turkish army’s biggest attack this year against the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north of Iraq, Ms Rice sought to provide reassurances to the Kurds that the Turkish attacks would not spiral out of control. on Tuesday, the Turkish army said several hundred of its troops had also crossed the border into Iraq, in what it said was pursuit of PKK forces preparing an attack. But later reports indicated the Turkish ground forces were withdrawing. The Kurdish regional government of northern Iraq is perhaps Washington’s strongest ally in the country, but Ankara accuses it of harbouring the PKK, which the US, Turkey and the European Union classify as a terrorist organisation. ‘No one should do anything that threatens to destabilise the north,’ Ms Rice said in Baghdad. But she added: ‘The US, Iraq and Turkey share a common interest in stopping the activities of the PKK, which threaten to undo […]