PKK in heart of drug trafficking- U.S. official

The outlawed PKK was involved in drug trafficking, but also other international organized crime, Michael Braun, the assistant administrator and chief of operations of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said.

Organizations like PKK, which were involved in drug trafficking and obtaining great deal of income from that trafficking besides being involved in terrorism, could be defined as "hybrid", Braun said on Friday in a special policy forum at the Washington Institute on "drug trafficking and Middle Eastern terrorist groups: a growing nexus?".

He said the United States was working with Turkey and other countries to end the activities of the terrorist organization PKK, adding the best thing to fight against terrorist organizations like PKK and al-Qaida was to demolish the walls and cooperate.

Braun, appointed as the DEA's chief of operations in February 2005, leads the drug-enforcement operations of the agency's 227 domestic and 87 foreign offices.

DEA is a United States Department of Justice law enforcement agency tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the U.S.

Turkey, provided with intelligence on PKK movements in Iraq by the U.S., has stepped up military action against the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community including the U.S. and the EU, since December, carrying out several air strikes and a week-long ground incursion into northern Iraq in February, where more than 2,000 PKK separatists take refuge.