October 17, 2007 | By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, Oct. 16 - With tensions high along the Iraqi-Turkish border as the Turkish government seeks parliamentary approval for military raids into northern Iraq, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said today that the approval would not necessarily immediately be followed by military action.

“I sincerely wish that this motion will never be applied,” Mr. Erdogan told his ruling AK Party in a speech, Reuters reported. “Passage of this motion does not mean an immediate incursion will follow, but we will act at the right time and under the right conditions.”

He also called on Iraq and the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to crack down on the Kurdish rebels, who launch attacks into Turkey from the Kurdish region of Iraq.

The vote in Parliament would permit Turkish armed forces to cross the border in pursuit of militant members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., who take refuge in mountain redoubts on the Iraqi side of the border. They are separatists who want an autonomous Kurdish region in the far eastern part of Turkey.

The Iraqi government is urging Turkey to seek a diplomatic solution, and it sent Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi to meet with Mr. Erdogan and other Turkish officials before the parliamentary vote. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for his top advisers to meet today to discuss the developments. He also called on Turkey to allow more time for a security committee made up of Iraqis, Turks and Americans to work toward a solution.

The Iraqi government will look at every possible way to solve the crisis with Turkey, Mr. Maliki said in a statement.

“We will never accept a military solution to the differences between Turkey and Iraq,” he said, adding that he was committed to stopping the P.K.K. attacks.

“With our understanding of the worries of the Turkish friends, we are ready to undertake urgent negotiations with senior Turkish officials to discuss all points of disagreement,” he said.

The two countries signed a security agreement last month to work together to combat violence by the P.K.K., which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. But the accords specifically denied Turkey the right to cross into Iraq, even in cases of “hot pursuit.”

Kurds in northern Iraq have been sympathetic to the separatist aspirations of the rebels and unmoved by pleas from the central government to restrain them.

The Turkish Parliament is expected to vote Wednesday and approve the motion, which would authorize the Turkish military to make as many entries across the Iraqi border as necessary for one year. The raids would be aimed solely at the P.K.K., said a government spokesman, Cemil Cicek, in a televised news conference.

The authorization request for raids was prompted by intensified P.K.K. attacks in recent weeks, including the deadliest day in the conflict in recent months. Thirteen Turkish soldiers were killed in one day in the predominantly Kurdish southeast in early October, an attack Turkish security forces attributed to the P.K.K.

On Sunday, Turkish artillery heavily shelled two villages on the Iraqi side of the border in northern Kurdistan, according to Col. Hussein Rashid of the Iraqi Border Protection Forces.

“There was no reason for the strike because there was no P.K.K. in this area,” Colonel Rashid said. No casualties were reported.

A car bomb exploded today near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 25, Reuters reported, citing police and military officials.

On Monday, the military announced that the capture of four men — one described as an insurgent leader and three as his associates — completed efforts to detain those believed to be responsible for a rocket attack last week on the Camp Victory military base that killed two people and wounded 38.

Also on Monday, in southern Iraq, Shiite insurgents attacked bases used by Polish, American and Iraqi forces with mortars and other guns. A spokesman for the Iraqi police and army said five Iraqi civilians were killed and 27 wounded. The American military reported four civilians dead and 12 wounded in the same attack. Two American soldiers were also wounded, according to a statement from the American military.

In Salahuddin Province on Monday, a suicide bomber struck a checkpoint set up by the Iraqi police and Sunni Arab tribesmen who have joined with the government to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group whose leadership has foreign ties, according to American intelligence agencies. The bomb, near the town of Balad, killed six people and wounded eight.

In Baghdad on Monday, a car bomb in the Mansour neighborhood killed three people. Five unidentified bodies were found in the city.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Sulaimaniya, Diyala, Salahuddin, Kut and Kirkuk.