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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (78704)	3/1/2003 1:03:26 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Turkey fails to approve US deployment Turkey's parliament has narrowly failed to approve the deployment of US troops on its territory for a possible war with neighbouring Iraq. MPs voted 264-250 in favour of the deployment, but the motion required more than half of those present in the chamber to approve it. The vote came amid mounting pressure from Washington, which has ships laden with tanks anchored off the Turkish shore. If war comes, Turkey will receive $15bn in aid and loans from the US. The motion - if passed in a subsequent vote scheduled on 4 March - would also authorise the government to send Turkish troops to Kurdish-populated northern Iraq in the event of war. The US urgently wants to deploy 62,000 troops and more than 250 planes in Turkey as part of its military plans. MPs said Turkey would send twice as many troops to northern Iraq. The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Ankara says the knife-edge vote is a massive blow for the four-month-old Turkish Government which has a massive majority in parliament. But he says, it is in accord with overwhelming popular disapproval of a war against Iraq - thousands took to the streets as the vote was being taken. Anti-war feeling On Friday State Department spokesman Richard Boucher made it clear the US was growing impatient with Ankara over the delay of the vote. "We've substantially completed our negotiations with the Turkish Government over the economic, political and military documents that can outline US-Turkey co-operation with respect to Iraq," he said. "It's now up to Prime Minister [Abdullah] Gul and his cabinet to complete the Turkish political process." The governing Justice and Development Party postponed the vote on Thursday amid signs that the government was having a tough time persuading deputies to support the motion. As the closed-door debate opened, Speaker Bulent Arinc stressed the gravity of the occasion. "We are here for an historic session," he said. "We are going to be making a very important decision on a very important issue by taking great responsibility." But opinion polls show that 80% of Turks are opposed to the war and tens of thousands of protesters, from academics to family parties, turned out in central Ankara. They chanted "No War" and "We don't want to be America's soldiers". It was, our correspondent says, a last-ditch effort to halt what looked like the inevitable, but Turkey needs the economic and political package that it has spent weeks negotiating with the US. Turkey, the only Muslim state in Nato, is also afraid of alienating a key ally. The military deal agreed by Washington and Ankara is believed to cover both the practicalities of how US troops will operate within Turkey - including which country's laws they are subject to - and the much more sensitive issue of how the Turkish and US militaries may co-operate in Iraq. Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk Published: 2003/03/01 17:43:27