January 17, 2003	Friday	Ziqa'ad 13, 1423

ANKARA, Jan 16: Turkey on Thursday officially invited five countries — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan and Syria — to a meeting to discuss ways of resolving the Iraqi crisis peacefully, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

“We have evaluated the possibility for regional countries to issue a call to the Iraqi administration to take all initiatives to allow the peaceful resolution of the problem,” Yusuf Buluc told reporters after a meeting at the ministry with the ambassadors of the five countries.

“We have invited the ambassadors today and told them Turkey was ready to organize a meeting for this purpose,” he added.

Buluc said the idea for the meeting came out after a recent tour by Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul to the five countries to discuss how to resolve the Iraqi crisis and avert war.

The spokesman said Turkey would await reactions from the countries invited before deciding where and when to stage the meeting.

The Egyptian Ambassador to Ankara Fathy al-Shazly meanwhile told reporters that the Turkish side aimed to hold the meeting next week, adding that Cairo supported the search for peace.

“The initiative of the Turkish government is to create a forum in which regional countries will urge the two sides...to take concrete steps towards defusing the tension and putting an end to the looming threat of a war in our region,” he said.

“We are in favour of whatever can be done in order to avoid war,” the ambassador added.

Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO and a key regional ally of the United States, is opposed to military action against Iraq, fearing economic and political turmoil.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Wednesday that Arab states and Turkey were seeking a formula acceptable to both Washington and Baghdad to head off war.

Gul said in remarks published on Thursday that the efforts of the regional countries aimed to ensure that Iraq was no longer perceived as a threat to international stability.

“(Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein must stop being a threat to the region and the world. And he has to prove that. Our primary objective as countries in the region is to exert pressure on Saddam in this direction,” Gul told the Milliyet daily.

“The perception of threat in the region must change, it must be eradicated. This is the aim of our joint efforts,” he added.

Asked whether Washington was irked by Ankara’s initiative, Gul said: “On the contrary, both the United States and the United Nations are very pleased with our undertakings.

“We are talking both to Iraq, to regional countries and to the United States in order to achieve a peaceful resolution. We are trying to find a mid-way,” the prime minister added.

Turkey, which is home to several major NATO air bases, is under pressure from Washington to provide logistical support for a possible war against Iraq.

But Ankara worries that a war in Iraq could hit its fragile economy and lead to the break-up of its southeastern neighbor.

It fears that the Kurds in breakaway northern Iraq could take advantage of the turmoil and proclaim independence in a move that might encourage separatism among their cousins in adjoining southeast Turkey.

After holding back on US requests for logistical support, Ankara yielded to Washington’s pressure last week and gave the go-ahead to a US mission to assess the suitability of Turkish air bases and ports for any military action.

US military experts carried out surveys at military facilities across the country for a third day on Thursday.

Turkish public opinion is staunchly against a US intervention in Iraq and small anti-war demonstrations are held almost on a daily basis in the country. —AFP