Ambassadors to be exchanged between Turkey and Iraq

Ankara announced today that it will enhance it diplomatic relations with the Iraqi government in reply to its being excluded from the peace agreement reached in Washington between two opposing northern Iraqi Kurdish factions and as an expression of its fear that the US settlement gives the Kurds permanent rule in northern Iraq.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said in a statement today that Ankara decided to resume its diplomatic relations with Baghdad on the ambassadorial level and that it has formally requested that the Iraqi government to allow a Turkish ambassador.

Ecevit, who is in charge of Prime Minister Masoud Yilmaz's affairs while Yilmaz is in New York to attend the meetings of the United Nations General Assembly, said that Iraq also called on Turkey to appoint an ambassador in Ankara on September 22, and he promised to expedite the process of exchanging ambassadors.