Turkish-U.S. ties were "not linked to a single motion," said Gul

Additional Reporting by Sa'ad Abdul Majid, IOL Turkey Correspondent

ANKARA, March 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – U.S.-flagged carriers are offloading military equipment in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun on Sunday, March 2, as Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul warned Iraq against misusing the defeated parliamentary motion to delay compliance with the UN disarmament efforts.

The Turkish news station NTV screened the carriers while unloading some 1,000 military vehicles at the airport to be then moved into the Turkish territories.

The U.S.-flagged ship Tellus offloaded in mid-February 522 military vehicles among other military equipments, in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun, southern Turkey without permission from the Turkish government.

The vehicles included army trucks, radio transmission vehicles and other types of troop transporters, according to footage broadcast by the network.

The news coincided with Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) reconsideration of a new parliamentary vote on the deployment of U.S. troops here for a possible Iraq invasion, only a day after lawmakers spurned the U.S. request in a narrow vote.

"This issue is being evaluated by the party leadership and the government," Justice and Development Party (AKP) chairman Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in press statements after talks with top party and government officials.

"If deemed necessary, this step (a second motion) will be taken," he added.

The announcement came amid what observers were calling a serious danger to relations between Turkey and the United States, after MPs on Saturday declined to give the green light for 62,000 U.S. soldiers to deploy in Turkey, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Relations Threatened

The vote delivered a serious blow to U.S. plans to invade Iraq from the north and blocked Turkish plans to send troops to northern Iraq to keep check on the region's breakaway Kurds.

However, a senior party official, Eyup Fatsa, meanwhile, said that there was no plans for a new motion "in the foreseeable future".

The AKP controls nearly two-thirds of the 550-seat legislature, but it failed by three votes to win support for the measure despite intense efforts to ensure MPs toed the government line.

Both Erdogan and Prime Minister Abdullah Gul maintained on Sunday that bilateral ties would remain intact.

"The strategic partnership and the historical ties between the U.S. and Turkey cannot deteriorate in one day just as they have not been built in one day." Erdogan said.

Gul, meanwhile, said Turkish-U.S. ties were "not linked to a single motion."

Frustrated by Ankara's reluctance to give support, the United States had tried to win Turkey over with pledges of a six-billion-dollar aid package.

Turkey meanwhile had sought assurances that Kurds in the north of Iraq, which has been outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf war, would not be allowed to break free and declare independence, a move it fears could rekindle separatist rebellion among its own Kurdish community.

Saturday's parliamentary vote came amid reports that the two sides were very close to reaching a deal on the military, political and economic aspects of bilateral cooperation in an Iraq war.

The result of the ballot appeared to have surprised Washington, and pleased Baghdad.

But Gul warned Iraq not to think it could delay cooperation with UN weapons inspectors because of the Turkish vote.

"If they (the Iraqi leadership) misunderstand and abuse the parliament's decision and delay implementing UN resolutions, they will themselves make peace difficult," he said.

American Doubts

U.S. Senator Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations committee told Fox News Sunday that he doubted the Turkish government would reverse course.

"I don't know, but doubt it," he said, "because there's so much at stake here for the Turkish government.

Losing the Turkey option, "will not fundamentally affect our ability to succeed militarily," he said.

"But it will alter our ability to be, in effect, interspersed and be the interlocutors between the Kurds and the Turks, which worries me a great deal in the north about the day after, the week after, the year after, the decade after."

Former General Joseph Ralston, who Friday left his role as NATO commander, told CBS News that the Turkish parliament's move would hurt Turkey more than U.S. war plans.

"If President Bush decides to have a military operation in Iraq, we can do that with or without the so-called Northern Option," he said, adding that instability in northern Iraq would be bad for Turkey and "the best way to keep the instability from occurring is to have U.S. forces on the ground in northern Iraq."

Ralston said that General Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, "is not someone sitting there with a single plan."

"He has options, and so we will have to look at other ways to do that," he said.