Turkey warns it might
annex northern Iraq

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Turkish officials said Ankara has warned the United States that Turkey regards parts of northern Iraq as Turkish territory. They said this includes the oil-rich region around Kirkuk.

The Turkish message was submitted to Washington amid U.S. talks with Kurdish opposition groups, officials said. Ankara's message was meant to stress that Turkey will use force to stop any independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and would not rule out annexing parts of the area, the Turkish officials said.

Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said Ankara has the right to northern Iraq in a claim that has existed since 1920. That claim was part of a Turkish parliamentary decision that set the borders of Turkey.

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"It is an area which had been forcibly separated," Cakmakoglu said. "Northern Iraq is under our safekeeping."

The statement by the defense minister was regarded as the most explicit threat by Ankara to annex parts of northern Iraq. Officials said Turkey also intends to press Turkoman, or ethnic Turkish claims, to Mosul in northern Iraq.

Officials said Turkey has been alarmed by the prospect that the United States would begin its campaign against the Saddam regime by an attack in northern Iraq. They said such a scenario would comprise a U.S.-supported Kurdish attack against al-Qaida insurgents in northern Iraq.

Hundreds of al-Qaida supporters infiltrated northern Iraq in an effort coordinated by Iran and Iraq amid the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. The al-Qaida force, known as Ansar Islam, has been battling the pro-U.S. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan over the last month.

Ansar Islam, which has been in northern Iraq since 1988, was said to have been bolstered and taken over by al-Qaida insurgents who fled from Afghanistan over the last year. The officials said Ansar, with Iranian supplies and Iraqi weapons, has taken control of Kurdish villages near the Iranian border.

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