TURKEY: Iraq urged Turkey to reject US requests for military support in any attack on Baghdad as six Middle Eastern states met yesterday in Istanbul to discuss ways of avoiding a potentially destabilising war.
The US is looking to Turkey for use of its air bases and frontiers to open a "northern front" against Baghdad if it chooses to attack. Ankara opposes war, fearing economic and social turmoil as well as popular disapproval, but may ultimately be hard pressed to deny help to its close NATO ally.
Foreign ministers from Iraq's neighbours Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria met yesterday, along with regional heavyweight Egypt, at an old Ottoman palace on the banks of the Bosporus waterway that separates Europe from Asia.
"We believe the only way a war might be avoided is for Iraq to fully and unconditionally comply, and if it doesn't we all fear the worst," the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Mr Marwan al-Muashar, said.
"We are sending a strong signal to Baghdad that this is about the region, not just about Iraq. This is not a matter of being bullied by the United States."
The Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Mr Talip Abid Salih El Duleymi, said states attending the conference should use their influence with Washington to hold it back from an attack.
"Turkey is a strong country, it could reject the US requests," he added in comments through an interpreter. "The Turkish people do not want an attack."
Senior Egyptian diplomat Mr Mahmoud Mubarak said the foreign ministers would also call on UN weapons inspectors to conduct their work impartially and without provoking Baghdad.
Turkey has said it could not support an attack without a second UN resolution explicitly sanctioning use of force. US military officials have been in intensive talks with Ankara, but have yet to agree on the number of soldiers who might be permitted in the event of an invasion.
In a communique issued at the end of their day-long meeting, the foreign ministers of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey said: "The spectre of war in Iraq is looming large. The countries of this region do not wish to live through yet another war and all its devastating consequences."