Salih: We Didn’t Expect Turkey To Take Such A Decision..

National Youth Foundation (MGV) Chairman Ilyas Tongus and executive board members visited Salih on Tuesday.

Tongus said that Turkish people felt sad about occupation which did not have any international legitimacy in Iraq.

Stating that they received many applications on how to extend aid for Iraqi people, Tonguc said that they wanted to bring women, children and ill persons from Iraq to Turkey. He added that they would extend all kinds of aid for those people to have medical treatment.

Tongus said that they believed that their initiatives on that issue would yield positive results.

Salih said that he was very glad since Turkish people visited him almost every day.

Salih said that attacks against infrastructure of Baghdad put forth that real aim of the United States was to massacre people and stated that thousands of people were killed and many nongovernmental organizations were destroyed in the result of those attacks.

When a reporter reminded the decision of Foreign Ministry to deport three Iraqi diplomats asking if the Ministry would also deport other diplomats, Salih said that this question should be asked to Foreign Ministry.

Salih said that all Iraqi diplomats working abroad worked by respecting international rules and with the aim of developing relations bilaterally and of protecting mutual interests. The Iraqi diplomats didn’t take any activity to spoil the interests of Turkey or any other country, he said adding that ”certainly, we are sorry about the decision of deportation. We didn’t expect Turkey to take such a decision against us. Our expectations from Turkey were different. We were expecting Turkey to assume an attitude to prevent the attack in a way that protected us.”

When reminded that the decision in question was taken following the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iraqi Ambassador said that the U.S. clearly expressed its demands about this issue and the U.S. had various demands from other countries against Iraq.