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The United States confirmed on Friday that Turkey will not send troops to Iraq.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and US Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed the situation with regard to the deployment of Turkish troops to Iraq Thursday night, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"After they reviewed the situation, Gul told Powell that the Turkish government was going to reconsider its offer to send troops to Iraq," Boucher said.
"They agreed together that they would work together on the reconstruction of Iraq," Boucher said, "but for the moment, this deployment of troops is not going forward."
"Obviously, we would have preferred if this all worked out very nicely to everybody's satisfaction but let's remember that the goal is stability in Iraq," he said.
"There is recognition, I think, on all our parts -- the United States' side, Turkish as well as the Iraqis -- that maybe this deployment at this time would not add to that goal in the way that we had hoped it would," he added.
On October 7, the Turkish parliament authorized the government to dispatch up to 10,000 Turkish soldiers to join the US-led stability force in Iraq, but the Iraqi Governing Council has rejected the deployment.
(Xinhua News Agency November 8, 2003)
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