- ANKARA, Turkey AFP --Turkey
on Sunday accused key ally Washington of backing an independent Kurdish
state in neighbouring Iraq and vowed it will use military force to prevent
such a move.
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- The row comes as the head of US forces in the Gulf is
to meet with the Turkish military on Monday over battle plans for a US
strike on Baghdad which Ankara fears could deepen its economic crisis and
unsettle the region.
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- "US officials say they do not want an independent
Kurdish state in northern Iraq but developments there show a de facto state
has been set up," Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel said in Sunday's
Milliyet newspaper.
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- "This raises suspicions about whether the United
States is trying to provoke Ankara by supporting these developments,"
Gurel said. "Proclamation of an independent Kurdish state... will
meet with Turkish intervention."
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- The support of both Turkey and Kurdish groups in Iraq
is seen as essential to US intentions to topple President Saddam Hussein's
Iraqi regime, which Washington has described as an "axis of evil"
along with Iran and North Korea.
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- Gurel said Turkey would not be prodded by "outside
provocation and encouragement" into taking military action but nevertheless
would do so if it sees a security threat developing.
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- Turkey fears the two Kurdish factions which now control
northern Iraq could seek to expand their control to the Kirkuk oil-producing
region, and lay the groundwork for future independence.
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- Ankara is concerned a breakaway Kurdish entity could
rekindle separatism among its own Kurds in southeastern Turkey.
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- Turkey says it already has hundreds of troops in northern
Iraq, which has been out of Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf war.
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