IRAQ: The US administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, was unable to reach agreement with Iraq's 25-member Governing Council yesterday over the deployment of 10,000 Turkish troops in Iraq, writes Lara Marlowe in Baghdad.
The council refrained from issuing a definitive statement against the move, and both sides hope a compromise can be reached today.
The manner in which this first crisis between Iraqi leaders and the US authorities who appointed them is resolved will set an important precedent. Washington desperately wants the deployment, to broaden the impression of an international coalition and to take the pressure off US troops who are suffering heavy casualties.
If Turkish troops are sent to Iraq, they will be the first Muslim force to join the coalition.
On Tuesday, the Turkish parliament accepted Washington's request for 10,000 Turkish troops. Turkey, the only Muslim country in the NATO alliance, had refused to allow its territory to be used for the war against Iraq last spring, and Prime Minister Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan is eager to mend relations with Washington. The US has offered to loan Turkey $8.5 billion in exchange for its "co-operation" in Iraq.
But a majority of the governing council, especially its Kurdish members, strongly oppose the deployment of Turkish troops.
They perceive the plan as a Turkish scheme to thwart Kurdish autonomy in Iraq and dampen similar aspirations among Turkey's large Kurdish minority.
The Iraqi newspaper al-Sabah reported that Ankara promised the governing council not to send troops without its approval.
Some members of the council believe that Mr Erdogan pushed the troop offer through parliament as a public relations gesture, but does not really intend to send soldiers.
Iraqi sources say the Turks would be stationed in the violent "Sunni Triangle" where US forces have most often come under fire, not in Kurdistan, where they might clash with Kurdish guerrillas. Like the Turks, the inhabitants of the triangle are Sunni Muslims, and Turks would be better accepted there than Americans.
Both Sunni and Shia religious leaders have spoken of the danger of creating outside "sponsors" for Iraq's religious communities. If the Turks became the protectors of Iraq's Sunnis, it would open the way for Iran to step in on behalf of the Shia.
"We have two very large neighbours with huge armies: Iran and Turkey," said Mr Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and member of the governing council. "They've had previous interests in Iraq, and currently they are very much interested."
In another sign that the region's fragile balance is threatened by the Turkish deployment, Mr Abdel Aziz Hakim, the representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) on the council, consulted leaders in Tehran yesterday and was to travel to Damascus today.
The Governing Council is eager to please Mr Bremer. But members do not want to appear as mere rubber stamps for US decisions.
On two earlier occasions, the council lost prestige by taking a stand and then faltering. When the US-appointed finance minister presented a law on the economy drafted by the Coalition Provisional Authority at a World Bank meeting in Dubai last month, council members op- posed it. The law was temporarily shelved amid great confusion.
The council attempted to flex its muscles by expelling the al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera television stations from Iraq. It then said they would merely be banned from press conferences for two weeks, but both networks attended briefings within days.
Now former Iraqi intelligence agents and ex-presidential staff have threatened to assassinate council members if they are not paid six months' back wages. These pillars of Saddam Hussein's fallen regime told Azzamam newspaper that they detonated the bomb outside the foreign ministry on Tuesday.
"If there is no response to our problem, we will hold big demonstrations with guns and carry out suicide bombings, including against American camps, and kill members of the Governing Council one by one," the group said.