Turkey will not send troops to Iraq

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey and the United States scrapped plans to send Turkish troops to Iraq, a setback for U.S. policy after Washington failed to break resistance to the deployment from Iraq's governing council.

Friday's announcement deprived the United States of a much-needed foreign force to contain an increasingly violent insurgency in Iraq. The Bush administration has been pressing Turkey for months to send what would be the first major Muslim contingent of peacekeepers.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul agreed in a telephone conversation Thursday night that the offer of Turkish troops would be withdrawn, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Without elaboration, Boucher said the "sensitivities" of the situation prompted the decision.

The Pentagon had been counting on a third multinational division, possibly led by Turkey.

The Turkish parliament voted last month to allow the country's troops to join the U.S.-led occupation of its southeastern neighbor. Turkey was expected to send some 10,000 soldiers and become the third-largest force in Iraq after Britain.

Turkish officials hoped that joining U.S.-led forces would mend strained ties with Washington after Ankara's refusal to let American troops invade Iraq from Turkish soil in March, as well as giving Turkey a chance to have a say on the future of Iraq, and contain the Turkish Kurdish rebel threat from bases in northern Iraq.

Iraqis, however, strongly objected to the Turkish troops because of sensitivities to the legacy of nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule in Iraq until World War I. Turks are mostly Sunni Muslims, and their predecessors, the Ottomans, favored Iraq's Sunnis while ruling over one of the world's great empires. They sidelined members of the Shiite Muslim sect, a majority in Iraq.

Additionally, Iraqi Kurds feared that Turks would threaten their self rule in northern Iraq. A 15-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels in Turkey ended in 1999, but the rebels have bases in northern Iraq and the potential to resume fighting.

The Pentagon announced plans Thursday to alert an additional 43,000 National Guard and Reserve support troops that they may be sent to Iraq as well.

The Turkish government's highly unpopular decision to send troops to Iraq was fueled by concerns of repairing ties with Washington, a key supporter of Turkey's battered economy and its ill-fated European Union candidacy.

"We said from the beginning that we were not too eager anyway (about sending troops)," Gul said. "We had said we would send if our contribution would be of use. We saw that this is not the situation. That's why we took this decision."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan added that Friday's decision was consistent with what the government had said earlier.

"Remember, after the parliamentary discussion on Oct. 7, we said the decision does not mean that we will send soldiers there tomorrow," Erdogan said.

The decision is not likely to strain ties between Washington and Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member.

Market analysts expected that the United States would still provide the $8.5 billion loan promised for Turkey's "cooperation in Iraq."

"Foreign Minister Gul and U.S. Secretary of State Powell agreed that Turkey and the U.S. would continue to work together for the Iraqi people and that Turkey would assume a key role in Iraq's stability and restructuring," said Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz.

Turkey may still play a part in reconstruction of Iraq, and already has a series of plans, from repairing damaged schools and hospitals to opening a bank. Trade has flourished since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with trucks ferrying Turkish goods across the border.