- WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Turkey
would not send peacekeeping troops to Iraq without a significant change
in the situation there, a Turkish official said in a big setback to US
efforts to attract military help in Iraq.
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- No additional countries have contributed forces in Iraq
since the UN Security Council approved a resolution last month.
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- Bush administration officials had hoped the UN action
would persuade reluctant allies to send more forces.
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- Turkey had been US officials' best hope. But Turkey's
ambassador to the United States, Osman Faruk Logoglu, said his country
would not send troops to Iraq without an explicit invitation from the US-appointed
Iraqi Governing Council - some of whose members have vocally opposed the
idea.
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- "Until we have a clear initiative from the Iraqi
people, we will not insist on going into Iraq," Logoglu said.
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- The ambassador said it was up to the US to press the
Iraqi council to make the invitation - a move he said the US appeared unwilling
to make.
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- "We felt that the Coalition Provisional Authority
and also officials here in Washington could have probably persuaded the
Iraqi Governing Council earlier on this issue," Logoglu said.
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- A spokesman for the US-led authority in Iraq, Dan Senor,
did not return a telephone message. State Department deputy spokesman Adam
Ereli said the United States still believed Turkish troops would make a
valuable contribution, and that US officials continue talks on the issue.
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- Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said more international
troops would help ease the burden on the 132,000 American troops in Iraq.
Right now, there are about 23,000 troops from more than 30 countries in
Iraq.
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- Pentagon officials say an infusion of thousands more
international troops could prompt a reduction in the number of US forces
- although Rumsfeld said last month that any Turkish troops probably would
not be in place soon enough to affect the Pentagon's present troop rotation
plans.
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- Under those plans, about 15,000 Army National Guard troops
have been mobilised for possible service in Iraq beginning early next year,
to replace weary active-duty troops who have been there nearly a year.
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- US officials have ruled out the idea of increasing overall
US troop numbers in Iraq, instead saying they will speed up the process
of getting trained Iraqi security forces into the streets to deal with
an increasingly sophisticated and deadly insurgency.
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- They also have ruled out the idea of recalling the old
Iraqi army, as some Iraqi officials want, the chief security adviser to
the US-led occupation said in an Associated Press interview yesterday.
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- US officials had pressed Turkey, the only majority Muslim
nation in NATO, to approve sending up to 10,000 troops. Turkey's Parliament
voted last month to allow a contingent of Turkish troops to join the US-led
occupation of Iraq, Turkey's neighbour to the south-east.
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- But progress stalled because of opposition from some
members of the Iraqi Governing Council, particularly Iraqi Kurds, one of
whom now serves as the council's president.
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- Turkey has fought since 1984 with independence-minded
Kurdish militants and continues to station thousands of troops just inside
Iraq's northern border.
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- Public opinion in Turkey also remains strongly against
the US-led war in Iraq or sending troops to assist in the occupation, Logoglu
said.
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- He said some Turkish officials were relieved about the
impasse, since it had postponed - perhaps indefinitely - the politically
unpopular move of actually sending troops.
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- Turkey rejected US overtures last northern winter to
allow US troops to invade northern Iraq through Turkey.
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- Logoglu said Turkish officials now recognise they missed
an opportunity to help shape post-war Iraq.
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- "I think we would have been in a more effective
position, a more influential position in Iraq had we allowed US troops
to go into Iraq through Turkey, but all is not lost," Logoglu said.
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- L. Paul Bremer, the US diplomat who heads the US authority
in Iraq, said on Saturday that the issue of Turkish peacekeepers was between
Turkey and the Iraqi Governing Council.
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- Turkey did not see it that way, Logoglu said.
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- "For whatever reason, this (Bush) administration
saw fit not to put too much counterweight on the Iraqi Governing Council,"
Logoglu said. "If the US perception of the need for Turkish troops
in Iraq changes, then perhaps that could change."
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- Copyright 2003 News Limited.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7775897%255E1702,00.html
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