March 21, 2003	Friday	Muharram 17, 1424

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ANKARA, March 20: Turkey on Thursday opened its airspace to US military overflights, enabling American forces to channel troops and equipment into northern Iraq to support the Iraq invasion.

The decision by Turkey’s parliament, hours after US forces launched missile attacks on Baghdad from the Gulf region, ended months of tense negotiation between Washington and Ankara.

Its provisions fell well short of the massive, land-based springboard the United states had sought in a previous plan rejected by deputies at the beginning of this month.

Parliament also laid the ground for dispatch of thousands of Turkish troops to northern Iraq — something viewed with deep misgivings by Iraqi Kurds, who have controlled the area since 1991. Washington will continue to press Ankara to keep its troops out, fearing a Turkish-Kurdish “war within a war”.

There is widespread public opposition to the US-led invasion. But Turkish financial markets will be relieved that parliament had finally opened the door to US forces, if only a little, and, for American tastes, very late.

Turkey forfeited a six billion dollars US aid package by rejecting Washington’s request for 62,000 US troops to be deployed for a “northern front”, which would have forced Iraqi forces to fight on two fronts. A 280,000-strong invasion force has assembled on Iraq’s southern borders.

Markets haunted by the prospect of a war without any aid package have suffered badly. But stocks and the lira currency fell only a shade on Thursday, helped by hopes the airspace deal might keep open a door to US aid.

The governing Justice and Development Party was already under media fire for “bungling” talks with Washington by delaying too long, and Thursday’s resolution was in many ways the worst possible outcome for Turkey.—Reuters