July 8, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 7,1424

ANKARA, July 7: A joint Turkish-US military inquiry is set to begin work on Tuesday to discover why 11 Turkish special forces members were detained for almost three days by US troops in Iraq in an incident that has deeply harmed Turkish-US relations.

According to a statement released by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, the inquiry meeting in the Iraq city of Kirkuk, will also seek to ensure that such incidents do not happen in the future.

The statement was released after Erdogan spoke by telephone to US Vice President Dick Cheney for the second time in two days.

The 11 Turkish soldiers returned to the northern Iraq town of Suleymania on Monday to resume their duties after they were released in Baghdad late Sunday night, Turkish chief of staff Hilmi Ozkok said on Monday.

Relations between the two NATO allies have only recently begun to improve since reaching a low point during the Iraq war when Turkey refused to allow 62,000 US troops into the country in order to attack neighbouring Iraq.

“Unfortunately this incident has caused a great security headache between the Turkish and US armed forces and has turned into a crisis,” Ozkok told reporters in Ankara.

Reports in the Turkish media over the weekend, since confirmed by US officials, said the reason for the raid and subsequent detention of the Turkish soldiers was over allegations of a plot to assassinate the Kurdish governor of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Ozkok dismissed such allegations Monday and said that in any case this was not the way to investigate such claims.—dpa