|
In a phone
conversation with his Iraqi counterpart late on Monday, Turkish
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated Ankara's respect
for Iraq's territorial integrity, Turkish foreign ministry
spokesman Tanju Bilgic told reporters.
Turkey says its latest deployment of soldiers to northern Iraq
is part of a mission to train and equip Iraqi forces. The Iraqi
government says it never invited such a force and will take its
case to the United Nations if they are not pulled out.
Seperately, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he
wanted to visit Baghdad as soon as possible to try to calm the
row over the troop deployment.
Turkish troops were in Iraq to protect against a possible attack
from Islamic State and those who interpreted their presence
differently were involved in "deliberate provocation", Davutoglu
said in a speech to his party in parliament.
He also said Ankara had discussed possible measures against
Russia at a cabinet meeting on Monday and will impose sanctions
if needed, while remaining open to talks with Moscow.
Russia has hit Turkey with a raft of sanctions after the Turkish
air force shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish
border last month. Davutoglu made the comments.
Davutoglu also slammed recent "insults and attacks" directed at
Turkey from within Iran, warning that Turkish-Iranian friendship
would suffer greatly if such attitudes continued. He did not
specify to which comments he was referring.
(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz, Ercan Gurses and Daren Butler;
Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Dolan)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
|
