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Turkey urges Iraq's neighbours to back new government
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-30 20:59
Turkey urged Iraq's other neighbours on Saturday to support the new
government in Baghdad in order to promote stability and keep the country
together.
"The national harmony, peace and stability of Iraq is not just a matter for
the Iraqis but all of us," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told foreign ministers
and officials from eight other regional states including Iraq at a meeting in
Istanbul.
"The transition administration in Iraq will have a really great burden on its
back," Erdogan said. "It is the duty of the international community to support
the achievement of peace and stability within the national unity of Iraq."
Ankara has been particularly anxious that communal divisions in Iraq
following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein do not cause a split that might leave
an independent Kurdish state on Turkey's border, neighbouring Turkey's own big
Kurdish population.
The eighth such meeting of its kind in the past two years took place two days
after Iraqis formed a first democratically elected government in half a century
following three months of deadlock that have undermined resistance to a Sunni
insurgency.
Representatives from Iraq's six immediate neighbours Turkey, Iran, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria as well as from Egypt and Bahrain took part.
Sunni Muslim-ruled Arab states have some concerns about the rise to power of
Iraq's Shi'ite Arab majority and non-Arab Kurds at the expense of once dominant
Sunnis. Non-Arab Shi'ite Iran says it wants an end to violence in its big
western neighbour.
Erdogan said he wanted to see the United Nations in a@active and visible role
in Iraq in the coming months as well as more involvement by the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference, the European Union and the Arab
League.
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