ISTANBUL, Aug 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Turkey, a key NATO and U.S. ally, said Friday the territorial integrity of its neighbor Iraq should be preserved and warned breakaway Kurdish groups in the north of the country against moves towards independence.

“Turkey favors the preservation of Iraq's territorial integrity and political unity. We believe that developments deviating from these principles will open the door for regional instability,” Tacan Ildem, spokesman for President Ahmet Necdet Sezer told a news conference Friday, August 23 ,2002, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“The political parties in northern Iraq should take into account our views... and should act with such an awareness,” Ildem said.

Two main Kurdish factions, part of the Iraqi opposition whom Washington is trying to win over to its side in a bid to remove the Iraqi president, have run northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, outside Baghdad's control and under the protection of a no-fly zone.

Media reports have said that Ankara's close ties with one of the factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani, have recently soured due to alleged plans by the group to move towards independence from Iraq if the United States launches a military operation in the country.

A Kurdish state at its doorstep is a worst-case scenario for Ankara, which fears that such a development could fan separatist sentiment among its own Kurds in adjacent southeastern Turkey at a time when a rebellion for self-rule there has virtually stopped.

“The political parties in Iraq, including the KDP, will benefit from always keeping in mind the constructive policies Turkey has so far displayed... the support and help it has ensured,” Ildem said.

The no-fly zone protecting the Iraqi Kurds is enforced by U.S. and British jets based in Turkey.

Ildem's remarks followed a similar warning by Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, who was quoted as saying in the press Thursday, August 22,2002 that "northern Iraq is not a region that we will let fall prey to the ambitions of this or that group."

Turkey has historical interests in northern Iraq and will not tolerate the establishment of an independent Kurdish state there, the mass-circulation Milliyet cited Cakmakoglu, AFP reported.

Northern Iraq "was forcibly separated [from Turkey] ... by manipulating [its] condition at the time," Cakmakoglu was quoted as saying, referring to the early 1900s when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and Allied western powers took over swathes of its territories in the Middle East.

His statement came in response to a question about alleged plans by Kurdish factions running northern Iraq to extend their control over regions including oil-rich Mosul and Kirkuk that are populated by 250.000 Turkmen in Kirkuk only, a group of Turkic origin, if the United States were to launch an operation against Iraq.

“Northern Iraq is not a region that we will let fall prey to the ambitions of this or that group... A [Kurdish] state to be established in Mosul and Kirkuk will discomfort both our country and our kin there,” Cakmakoglu said.

Mosul and Kirkuk were within the borders of the Turkish republic that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was planning to establish on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire when he initiated a liberation war. But he was later forced to surrender the regions to Britain.

“That is not a region we are about to sacrifice to anyone's interests,” nationalist Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said this week.

“No matter who is behind them, whatever power, we as officials of the Turkish Republic are here to say, ‘No’ ,” he added.

Referring to their Turkmen population, Cakmakoglu described Mosul and Kirkuk as “Turkish soil,” according to Milliyet.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Hürriyet news paper reported on Friday, August 23, that the Turkish Foreign Ministry send a massage to the responsible for the Kurdish relations in London after he returned from the Iraqi opposition meeting. The massage carries a warning for him asking him to return to his mind.

In addition, massive Turkish opposition was raised against the KDP as a Turkish news paper published Kurdish threatening for making the North Iraq a tomb for the Turkish army.

On the other hand, Khoshiar Zabary, official for International Relations in the KDP pointed out that there was a misunderstanding for the information issued in the newspaper by the Turkish officials, as there was no threatening in it.

Orchan Kanta, deputy for the Iraqi Turkmen described in Washington in a statement for the Turkish NTV news agency the statements of the Kurds leader Mosaud Berzany as inciting. He called the Turkish government to care for the Turkmen’s issues.

The possibility of a Kurdish state emerging in northern Iraq is one of the main reasons behind Turkey's stiff opposition to an U.S. military operation against the Baghdad regime.

Plagued by a deep economic recession, Turkey also fears the financial fallout of a war in the region and constantly reminds Washington that it has suffered losses of up to 40 billion dollars due to the sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War, when Turkey backed the U.S.