(Turkish PM) Erdogan Objects to US Military Presence in N. Iraq

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20061204&hn=38917

Erdogan Objects to US Military Presence in N. Iraq

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected to recommendations in a U.S. administration report referring to partial deployment of U.S. troops from central Iraq to the country’s north.

Talking to reporters on the return flight from a one-day official visit to Iran, Erdogan commented that the deployment of U.S. troops in Northern Iraq would be a mistake.

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Recalling his meeting with the U.S. President George Bush in Riga, Erdogan said: “The Baker Plan should be waited upon. All resistant groups in Iraq want the United States to pull out. When you look at the number of casualties during the war, you see 3,000 US troops dead and a loss of hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites. All are Muslim and Iraqi. Turkey and Iran should seek to prevent a Sunni-Shiite conflict. There is a great chance that such a conflict would spread to Lebanon. This risk should be eliminated by resolving the Lebanese crisis immediately.

“Meeting with Bush in Washington, he asked me to transmit to Teheran the message, ‘Work out the transparency issue, and we will resolve the rest through diplomatic means.’ He reiterated the same demand in Riga. We do not want to seem eager to propose a resolution. If our mediation is sought, we will offer it. The appropriate steps we took in the past have benefited us a lot.”