WASHINGTON, Nov 4: The Turkish ambassador in Washington said on Tuesday the United States was giving excessive favours to Kurdish groups in Iraq, at the risk of encouraging civil war and Kurdish secession in the future.

“The Kurdish representation is much in excess of their real standing in the society,” Ambassador Osman Faruk Logoglu said at a breakfast for defence writers.

“We think there is too much favouritism ... being given to specifically the Kurdish groups, (on) who runs (Iraq) and how the future of the country is going to be structured,” he said.

Mr Logoglu said the favouritism was reflected in the composition of the Iraqi Governing Council and interim cabinet and in US readiness to consider a federal constitution.

The Governing Council, appointed by the United States, had five Kurds among its original 25 members. Iraq’s four million Kurds make up about 16 per cent of the total population.

Turkey has its own large Kurdish minority on the northern side of the border with Iraq, and its policy toward Iraq has been dominated by anxiety to discourage any separatist tendencies among Kurds in any country.

It also complained earlier in the year that the small Turkmen minority in Iraq, estimated at two per cent of the population, had only one member on the Governing Council.

Mr Logoglu said: “If, for whatever reason, you say we should have a federation in Iraq and that the north of Iraq should belong to the Kurds, that’s a recipe for disaster.”

“If you give the impression that you will tolerate a system of federal arrangements that might eventually lead to separation, then you are already building in a module of instability into the future of Iraq and that’s why we say: ‘Don’t do it’,” he added.

The ambassador said Turkey was confident the United States would achieve its objectives in Iraq, despite the daily attacks on its forces and signs that opposition to the US occupation was increasing in some areas.

But he did not rule out the possibility the country would fall into civil strife, like Lebanon in the 1970s.

“The ultimate criterion (for) whether it will go in the direction of a Lebanon bogged down in civil war ... or whether it will stay together, is to make sure that all the groups in Iraq have an equal say and an equal opportunity in the shaping of their country. This is one of the big problems we are seeing in Iraq today,” he said.

The ambassador also criticized the United States for not trying hard enough to persuade the Iraqi Governing Council to accept Turkish troops in the country, and rejected the idea Turkey should reach an agreement directly with the Iraqis.

The Turkish government and parliament have approved a plan to send some 10,000 troops to help out US forces in Iraq, but the members of the Governing Council, especially the Kurdish representatives, are opposed.

The ambassador said Turkey would not send the troops into Iraq until they had a clear invitation from the council.

defence minister: Turkey reserves the right to send more troops to northern Iraq to fight Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding out there, Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul told MPs on Tuesday.

Mr Gonul said Turkey had dispatched troops, whenever necessary, to Iraqi Kurdistan to battle Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK-Kadek) separatists.

“We will not hesitate today to expedite troops to northern Iraq,” the defence minister was quoted as saying by Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

But Mr Gonul, speaking at a parliamentary session on his ministry’s budget, declined to disclose the number of soldiers already deployed in northern Iraq since 1997.

Several thousand Turkish soldiers are thought to be currently stationed in that part of Iraq, near the border with Turkey.

Asked whether Turkey would send tens of thousands of soldiers to support the US-led forces in Iraq, Mr Gonul said Turkey first needed to agree with the United States on modalities.

The Turkish parliament authorized such a deployment last month, but the plan has been put on hold following opposition from Iraq’s interim Governing Council.

Washington said last week the plan was still on the agenda, contrary to a statement from Turkey’s President Ahmet Necdet Sezer who said the subject was “closed”.

About 5,000 PKK-Kaded rebels are believed to be hiding out in Iraq’s northeastern mountains. —Reuters/AFP