Iraq’s Yawar in Ankara/Turkey for talks

Official sources said the agenda for the talks was dominated by increased security measures for Turkish truck drivers and workers following the killing of a lorry driver by hostage-takers and the abduction of several truckers delivering goods to the US forces in Iraq.
Turkish officials have already said they are working on a series of measures to ensure a safe working environment in the country, which was one of Ankara’s principal trading partners before the 1991 Gulf War.
Yawar told reporters that the two sides had begun talks on the sharing of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a long-standing dispute between the two neighbors.
Iraq, along with Syria, have long complained that their northern neighbor, which has built a number of dams, is monopolizing the water of the two major rivers, which originate in Turkey and flows on south to their territories.
He also pledged that Iraq would soon allow Turkey to reopen its consulate in the northern city of Mosul.
Earlier in the day, Yawar met with Turkish businessmen and encouraged them to boost investment in Iraq.
Turkish Foreign Trade Minister Kursat Tuzmen said the uninterrupted flow of oil through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline and Turkish participation in oil projects in Iraq were key to the development of trade.
Tuzmen said some one thousand Turkish companies were currently active in Iraq.
Bilateral trade volume is expected to reach two billion dollars by the end of the year, and the target for 2005 is five billion dollars, he said.
Both sides said they were eager to finish work on the opening of a second border crossing between the two countries in order to facilitate the ferrying of goods.
It was Yawar’s first trip abroad as interim president.