NATO member Turkey said yesterday it would open its air bases to US warplanes to mount military operations against Iraq if Washington goes ahead with a possible war on Baghdad.
This would put the majority Muslim nation in the frontline in any attack against Baghdad, accused by Washington of developing weapons of mass destruction.
In Iraq, weapons inspections continued with inspectors allowed access to one of President Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces.
The United States already uses Turkish air bases to patrol a so-called "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq that US and British planes have enforced since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
"What we mean by co-operation is opening air bases and opening facilities to use," Turkish Foreign Minister Mr Yasar Yakis told a news conference in Ankara after meeting British Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw.
Asked if Turkish co-operation would include combat strikes, Mr Yakis said: "Yes . . . If you're talking about air bases, yes, those will be opened."
He said Ankara still hoped the standoff with Iraq could be resolved peacefully.
US Deputy Defence Secretary Mr Paul Wolfowitz was also in Ankara yesterday to lobby support for any possible action against Iraq.
Iraq yesterday promised to meet a UN deadline to hand over a declaration on its arms programmes, but insisted it had no weapons of mass destruction to confess to.
In line with Baghdad's avowed policy of complying with UN inspections in the hope of averting a full-scale US attack, an Iraqi official said a statement would be provided on Saturday - a day before time runs out.
But in a reminder that a low-intensity conflict is already being waged, Iraq said it opened fire at western warplanes yesterday.
"We are going to deliver this declaration in the proper time on the seventh of this month and the people here, the UNMOVIC and IAEA, will take this declaration to New York and Vienna," said Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, referring to the two arms inspection bodies.
Meanwhile, UN arms inspectors searched one of Saddam's lavish palace compounds in Baghdad yesterday in the biggest test of Iraqi co-operation since arms inspections resumed.
Teams of inspectors entered al-Sojoud palace, one of several presidential compounds across Iraq, in central Baghdad.
Inspections of presidential palaces were a repeated source of confrontation between Iraq and UN inspectors in the 1990s.
"Open the gate, we want to come in," an inspector told guards at the palace gate. "We can't, we are waiting for orders," one replied.
The inspector protested and a few minutes later the gates were opened.
The UN Security Council demands that access to sites be immediate and unfettered.
Journalists were allowed a peek inside the grandiose palace ground after the UN experts and their Iraqi "minders" left.
Inside the palace were marble fountains and gold-coloured elevator doors. A plaster model of the compound showed damage from western bombardment during the 1990s.
A source close to UN weapons inspectors said Iraq recently admitted to several failed attempts to acquire aluminium tubing for use in conventional weapons in violation of United Nations sanctions.
But Baghdad immediately denied that claim, saying it has had the aluminium tubing since 1989, before the UN sanctions imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and was using them for the production of artillery shells.
"The Iraqis said they tried to import the aluminium tubing, but not for use in nuclear weapons as the US and Britain have alleged," the source close to the inspectors said.