Turkey removes ban on Baghdad border trade

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit announced on July 7 the lifting of a ban on border trade with Iraq imposed after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

"The ban on border trade in the Southeast has been lifted," Ecevit told a meeting of his democratic left party.

Although he did not mention Iraq by name, the deputy premier was clearly referring to Baghdad. Turkey has imposed no restrictions on trade with its two other southeastern neighbors, Iran and Syria.

Ecevit did not say if the government's move constituted a violation of a UN-sponsored trade embargo imposed on Iraq since August 1990.

Turkey has complained that it has suffered more than 30 billion US dollars in lost trade with Iraq, which had been Ankara's second-largest trading partner before the Gulf crisis, and has called for the lifting of the sanctions on Baghdad.

Last year Ankara asked the United Nations to grant it a special status, like that of Jordan, under which it could buy a limited amount of oil from Iraq in return for food sales. But it has received no reply so far.

The United Nations has in the last few years been tolerating moves by Turkish truck drivers taking food into Iraq and bringing small amounts of oil back every day through the Habour border post, the only crossing point between the two countries.

Iraq resumed limited oil sales last December under an oil-for-food deal with the UN. Most of the oil sold has flowed to the Mediterranean via a pipeline passing across Turkish territory.

Ecevit, a hard-liner in relations with the US and other western allies on Iraq policies and the Cyprus problem, became deputy prime minister on June 30.

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