Washington's plans to invade Iraq via Turkey seemed on the verge of evaporating at the weekend, as Turkey's new Prime Minister refused to specify when parliament would vote on possible US troops deployment.
Speaking only hours after he formally took office on Friday evening, Mr Tayyip Erdogan said: "There is no such thing on our agenda at the moment. We will address the issue after receiving a vote of confidence in the new government."
With the confidence vote scheduled for this Friday, analysts say a new bill will not be ready for parliament before next week. And that, it seems clear, is too late for the Bush administration, which had expected deployment in Turkey to begin early in March.
Washington officials responded by signalling that a multi-billion-dollar aid package the US was offering in return for Turkish co-operation was off the table.
"The package had time constraints, and those constraints have been passed", said one official in Ankara.
The Bush administration also warned against Turkish plans to create a 12-mile-wide military buffer zone inside northern Iraq. "We have made it very clear that we remain opposed to any unilateral military operation", said a US State Department spokesman.
Turkey says it would consider an Iraqi Kurdish independence bid as a declaration of war and is keen to avoid a repetition of 1991, when half a million refugees fled to Turkey ahead of the advancing Iraqi army.
Insisting that such concerns can be addressed without Turkish intervention, US officials say they are trying to organise a meeting between Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish leaders this week.
But despite Washington's assurances that it opposes an independent Kurdish state, Turkish suspicions of US intentions in Iraq run deep.
One senior government official said his colleagues were well aware they would pay dearly for their hesitation. "But Mr Erdogan has waited too long to come into politics to throw away his career on the first uncertain bill," he said.
Turkey's parliament unexpectedly turned down a first US demand for deployment on March 1st. "The situation is even more critical now", said the official.