ANKARA, Jan 7: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met top Turkish officials on Wednesday on a landmark trip that has found common ground between the two former foes with both denouncing any move to create Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.

Assad and Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer reacted sharply on Tuesday night to US comments that Washington was not prepared to step in to stop Iraqis taking the potentially divisive step of establishing Kurdish autonomy in the new Iraq.

"The territorial integrity of Iraq, the freedom and the unity of the Iraqis has to be preserved," Assad told reporters in Ankara late on Tuesday, on the first official visit to Turkey by a Syrian head of state.

"We both condemn any approach that can damage this aim." Sezer reiterated Assad's point at the joint news conference, saying: "Turkey and Syria, as neighbouring countries of Iraq, reaffirm our determination to consider those goals in an active way."

Assad met Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and military Chief of Staff Hilmi Ozkok on Wednesday morning, as well as opposition leader Deniz Baykal. He made no comments to the press and the rest of the day's programme involved cultural visits.

The Syrian leader's trip marks a dramatic thaw in relations between the two neighbours, divided for years by rows over territory, water resources and Syria's long-time tacit support for Kurdish fighters fighting in southeastern Turkey.

The two countries came to the brink of war in 1998 until Damascus expelled Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan. But the prospect that some kind of Kurdish ethnic entity might be carved out of Iraq when Washington hands sovereignty back to the Iraqis by the end of June has spooked Damascus into worrying about its own Kurdish minority.

Now Turkey and Syria, far from being split over Kurdish independence, are united in their fears that Kurdish autonomy in Iraq could fuel similar demands in their own countries.

"Syria used to hold the Kurdish card against Turkey... But since then international developments have led both Turkey and Syria to become frightened by the establishment of a Kurdish state," commentator Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in Wednesday's Turkish Daily News.

"The countries are now cooperating to avoid this by formulating joint policies. Turkey, for the first time ever, seems to have found an ally."-Reuters