ANKARA, Feb 24: Bowing to strong pressure from Washington, the Turkish government reluctantly decided on Monday to ask parliament to approve the deployment of US soldiers in Turkey and the dispatch of Turkish forces to northern Iraq.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener, emerging from a seven-hour cabinet meeting, told reporters that a motion on the deployment had been sent to parliament even though Turkish-US talks on conditions for the deal were still ongoing.

The decision was taken even though “an important number of ministers found unsatisfactory the point” reached in the talks with the United States over financial aid and military cooperation in the event of a possible war against Iraq, Sener told reporters.

“We do not want our strategic partnership with the US to be clouded,” the head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said for his part.

Faced with a staunchly anti-war public opinion, the sole Muslim member of NATO has been holding out for days against strong pressure from Washington to allow its territory be used as a launching pad for a US invasion of Iraq from the north.

In return for its support, Turkey is seeking several billion dollars in aid to compensate for damages a war might inflict on its already hard-hit economy, along with a written pledge that the Kurds in northern Iraq will not be allowed to break away from Baghdad.

In an apparent reference to US pressure, Sener said: “It was decided that delaying the motion will not be very healthy under the current circumstances.”

He added that “the parliament is of control of its agenda and it will make the decision.”—AFP