Also on Friday, Turkey decided not to deploy 10,000 troops to its southern neighbor. Washington had been pressuring Turkey for months to send what would have been the first contingent of troops from a Muslim country, but the move faced strong resistance from the Iraqi Governing Council.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul agreed in a phone conversation Thursday night that the offer of Turkish troops would be withdrawn. "Obviously, we would have preferred if this all worked out very nicely to everybody's satisfaction, but let's remember that the goal is stability in Iraq," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
Iraqis were worried that Turkey wanted to dominate oil-rich northern Iraq and that the presence of Turkish troops would cause friction with Iraq's Kurdish minority. A 15-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels in Turkey ended in 1999, but the rebels still have bases in northern Iraq and the potential to resume fighting. The Kurds intensely lobbied the Governing Council to reject any Turkish deployment.
(SF Chronicle)
