Herald Sun, 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.
No additional countries have contributed forces in Iraq since the UN Security Council approved a resolution last month.
Bush administration officials had hoped the UN action would persuade reluctant allies to send more forces.
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.
“Until we have a clear initiative from the Iraqi people, we will not insist on going into Iraq,” Logoglu said.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Turkey has fought since 1984 with independence-minded Kurdish militants and continues to station thousands of troops just inside Iraq's northern border.
Public opinion in Turkey also remains strongly against the US-led war in Iraq or sending troops to assist in the occupation, Logoglu said.
He said some Turkish officials were relieved about the impasse, since it had postponed – perhaps indefinitely – the politically unpopular move of actually sending troops.
Turkey rejected US overtures last northern winter to allow US troops to invade northern Iraq through Turkey.
Logoglu said Turkish officials now recognise they missed an opportunity to help shape post-war Iraq.
“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.
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.
Turkey did not see it that way, Logoglu said.
“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.”
