Turkey says Iraq must not be split up

Ankara, Nov 15: Turkey today condemned suggestions that dividing its eastern neighbour Iraq into three separate states could bring peace, saying such a move would instead plunge the whole region into chaos.

''God forbid, if Iraq breaks up, an unbelievably dark new period will begin,'' Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said, using unusually strong language.

''In such an event, Iraq's neighbours will not have the same attitude as today, of course. The world should know this,'' he told parliament's budget committee, signalling that Turkey and other neighbours would not stay quietly on the sidelines.

Ankara, a NATO ally of the United States, is especially worried about the possible emergence of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq that could stoke separatism among its own large Kurdish population in southeast Turkey.

Iran and Syria also oppose the creation of a Kurdish state.

Some U.S. politicians including Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat who is expected to head the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations, have suggested creating three largely automous regions for Iraq's Shi'ites in the south, Sunni Arabs in the centre and Kurds in the north.

''This kind of simplistic approach would definitely drag the country into chaos and can never be an alternative,'' said Gul, evoking the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Gul also urged Kurds, Arabs and Turkish-speaking Turkmen to forge a compromise over the fate of Kirkuk and its oil reserves in northern Iraq. Ankara fears the region's dominant Kurds aim to turn Kirkuk into the capital of a new state.

Reuters