SENIOR Iraqi Kurdish leaders flew into the highly charged atmosphere of Ankara yesterday for a meeting that is hoped will defuse a bitter dispute between two of Washington’s crucial allies.

Although the gathering has been billed as a forum for the Iraqi opposition to discuss the shape of postwar Iraq, it is expected to focus on an argument between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds over Turkish plans to send troops into Kurdish-ruled northern Iraq in a war.

Yet as Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Nechirvan Barzani, a senior Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) delegate, boarded the aircraft to the Turkish capital, it was unclear whether Ankara would have a role in a war.

Despite sustained pressure from Washington, Turkey’s parliament has not yet tabled a second vote after its rejection of the deployment of US troops in southeast Turkey for a northern front.

“Nothing is over yet, but every day that goes by it becomes less likely that there will be a northern front,” a Western diplomat in Ankara said. “The Turkish Government seems to be in no hurry.”

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK) was badly split over the first vote, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, cannot afford to preside over another failure in a party that is still strongly anti-war. Mr Erdogan says that nothing will happen until after a vote of confidence in his new Government, which is not now expected until next Sunday.

An AK party source indicated that nothing was certain even then. “Everybody knows that Turkey has certain sensitivities. As far as I know these haven’t been satisfied so far,” he said.

These sensitivities could be addressed in part at the meeting in Ankara, which is expected to start tomorrow with the participation of Turkish officials and Zalmai Khalilzad, the US special envoy.

Ankara is keen to avoid the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq — something that it believes will stir Kurdish separatism across the border in southeast Turkey — and wants written guarantees against Kurdish independence. It also wants a bigger role for the region’s Turkoman minority to safeguard Turkish interests.

The fact that the pro- Turkish Turkomans will be represented at the meeting could indicate that both sides will try to address the issue. However, it seems unlikely that Turkey will be persuaded to abandon plans to enter northern Iraq, which it says is necessary to help to care for refugees and to keep as many of them as possible in Iraq.

Turkey has scarcely tried to hide that the tens of thousands of troops would also guard against Kurdish independence.

As far as Washington is concerned, Turkey cannot do this without American blessing, which it cannot have unless it allows the deployment of up to 62,000 US troops in southeast Turkey. According to Milliyet, a Turkish newspaper, which claims to have seen the contents of a letter sent to Mr Erdogan, President Bush has been voicing fears that if Turkey were to go into northern Iraq alone, it would risk clashing not only with the Iraqi Kurdish militia but also with troops from its Nato ally.

Even though it stands to lose a $30 billion aid package, there is little indication that the Turkish leadership has been rattled. Bulent Arinc, the parliament’s Speaker and a strong opponent of US deployment, said that no leader had the right to threaten the leader of another country “even if this person’s name is Bush. The Turkish Government knows what it is doing.”

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