Washington replied that it had made a final offer of economic aid, and was preparing to deploy American troops elsewhere in the region if Ankara rejected it.
“There comes a moment when plans must be made, decisions must be made, and (negotiations) cannot stretch on indefinitely,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, issuing what amounted to a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum.
While Turkish bases would be “desirable” as a springboard for a possible invasion of Iraq from the north, Fleischer said the US military had the flexibility to carry out its mission without Turkey’s help.
The Turkish government has put on hold a parliamentary vote on allowing US troops to use Turkey as a springboard for attacks, complicating war planning in Washington.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul by telephone to review the current stage in bilateral talks over Iraq.
In Ankara, US Ambassador Robert Pearson said: “Time is of critical importance for us. We want to reach a solution as soon as possible. We are working hard.”
Ankara can ill-afford to reject the demands of its number one ally, but is bargaining hard to get the best deal possible before a parliamentary vote, according to observers here.
Turkey has estimated the war could cost it billions of dollars and local press reports suggested the government might be asking for up to 50 billion dollars in loan guarantees and direct support from Washington.
“The framework of the agreement that we are seeking has not materialized yet,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener told reporters following a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
“There is no decision yet on a (government) motion” to ask parliament to approve the deployment of US troops on Turkish soil, he said.
The head of Turkey’s ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday that Ankara’s backing for a US-led invasion was subject to change if Washington did not meet its demands.
Stationing troops in Turkey would allow the US to stage an invasion from the north in addition to a main assault from the south.
Earlier this month parliament allowed the United States to upgrade Turkish military facilities that could be used in a war, despite obvious reluctance from many deputies.
Ankara’s anxiety over financial guarantees stems from the 1991 Gulf war, in which Turkey backed the US-led coalition that forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.
Turkey says it lost up to 40 billion dollars in trade due to UN embargoes slapped on Baghdad after the war, and accuses Washington of failing to deliver promised compensation. This time it wants promises of aid to be backed by a memorandum of understanding.
A US congressional delegation, headed by Senate Armed Services committee chairman John Warner, was due in Ankara on Thursday to pledge its own backing to the Turkish government.
In Brussels on Wednesday, NATO formally approved the deployment of defensive measures for Turkey after being paralysed for weeks by one of the worst crises in its half-century history.
The decision cleared the way for NATO to field AWACS aircraft, Patriot missile systems and chemical-biological response units for the defence of Turkey, the alliance’s only Muslim member.
JIANG-PUTIN UNDERSTANDING: Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Wednesday that UN weapons inspections must continue in Iraq and the crisis should be resolved through diplomacy.
The Kremlin said in a statement the two leaders promised during a telephone conversation to work together towards finding a political solution to the crisis through the United Nations.
Putin and Jiang “noted with satisfaction that many nations in the world, both on the official and public levels, support the idea of continuing Iraqi weapons inspections and compliance with UN Security Council resolution 1441, so as to guarantee a political-diplomatic solution to the Iraqi problem,” the Kremlin said.
The statement was issued moments after a top Russian official confirmed that Moscow saw no need for adopting a second UN Security Council resolution on Iraq that would pave the way for potential use of force, an idea supported by Washington and London.
“We continue to believe that no new resolutions on Iraq are required,” Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
“Russia maintains that the international inspectors in Iraq have enough authority, including under the strict but implementable UN Security Council resolution 1441,” added Fedotov, who handles UN affairs.
The United States and Britain are expected soon to put forward a new UN resolution that could authorize strikes on Iraq despite insistence by most other Security Council members for UN weapons inspections to continue.
Appeals at the United Nations by US Secretary of State Colin Powell have so far failed to sway the positions of any of the major powers — including Russia, China and France — in favor of Washington’s hawkish stance on Baghdad.
But Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Wednesday that Moscow was determined to work hand-in-hand with Washington in resolving the heated differences over Iraq.
“I think that the developing partnership between our nations answers the interests not only of Russia and the US, but also the interests of international stability as a whole,” news agencies quoted Ivanov as saying.
Russia’s top diplomat added the friendship between Moscow and Washington that developed following the Sept 11, 2001, strikes on the United States was strong enough to survive the Iraqi test. “The maturity of relations becomes evident when difficult, rather than simple, problems are solved,” said Ivanov. —AFP\Reuters