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Baghdad sticks to political means to end crisis with Ankara: Iraqi FM

Xinhua, December 14, 2015 Adjust font size:

Iraq said on Sunday that it would adhere to political option to end the crisis with Turkey, stressing not to allow breaching Iraq's sovereignty.

"We are committed to the political option on the Turkish incursion, and are keen to maintain our relations with Turkey, but that sovereignty is a red line," Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said at a press conference.

The focus is on "diplomatic means to resolve the crisis" with Turkey, as "it could be easy for us to be dragged into a crisis, but it won't be easy to get rid of such crisis," he said.

The minister said if Iraq allows any country to build military bases inside its territories, then the door would be opened for more countries to do so.

He also said Iraq welcomes any assistance that would help it to free its territories from any forces that would enter its territory without the permission of Iraqi government.

Jaafari's comments came three days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that withdrawing Turkish troops from Iraq is out of the question and that the Turkish soldiers are in Iraq as part of a training mission.

The deployment of Turkish troops dates back to 2002 and additional troops were deployed in 2014 in response to a request from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi, Erdogan told a press conference.

"Turkish troops in Mosul are not there as combatants; they are trainers ... It is out of the question, for now, to pull them out," Erdogan said.

The crisis between the two countries sparked last Friday when reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armored vehicles was deployed near the city of Mosul to train Iraqi paramilitary groups in fighting the Islamic State (IS) group.

Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, has been under the IS control since June 2014.

Baghdad has insisted that the Turkish troops had no authorization from the Iraqi government and thus demanded their withdrawal, while Ankara called the troops only a routine rotation of the trainers. Endit