US to reassure Turkey over Iraqi Kurds

With the Prime Minister due to arrive in Washington on January 26, the Bush administration intends to reassure Turkey that the US fully supports the retention of Iraq’s territorial integrity, a senior US official told reporters late Monday.
“I am sure the whole discussion about Iraq will be a major part of the discussion between the prime minister and the president,” the official was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.
“Their concern is disproportionate Kurdish influence will potentially lead to fragmentation and an independent Kurdistan emerging which they would regard as a threat to their territorial integrity and national security,” the official said.
The official said that Turkey did not believe that ethnicity should play a part in the administrative division of the new Iraq.
However, State Department official Adam Ereli, commenting on a report carried by the New York Times Monday that the US and Iraqi leaders had agreed on a semi-autonomous status for Northern Iraq, said that it was up to Iraqis to decide on the form of their new administration.
“The structure of a future Iraqi state, including federalist elements, is a constitutional issue for the Iraqis to decide,” he said.