TURKEY is expected today belatedly to give the US Air Force the right to use its airspace in a war on Iraq and, despite strong opposition, to sanction the entry of its own forces into northern Iraq.

Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, acknowledged that Turkey would not now receive a US aid package worth about $30 billion (£19 billion) because it had not granted Washington’s original request to allow the deployment of up to 62,000 US troops on its land. Mr Erdogan said that the new parliamentary motion would not even include the use of airbases.

“There is no monetary discussion at the moment with the United States — all our calculations are in political and military areas,” he said.

Mr Erdogan has appeared reluctant to take the issue back to parliament because nearly 100 of his MPs voted against him in an earlier, failed vote. Turkey’s decision comes too late for the Americans, who will now be unable to open a sizeable northern front.

Turkey has yet to receive US approval for its plans to take troops into northern Iraq to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state which, it says, would stir up its own restive Kurdish population.

A Turkish government spokesman said that the US had agreed to the Turkish deployment in principle, but that details would be worked out later. Official US statements do not bear this out, however. It seems unlikely that Turkey would scrap its plans given the military’s sensitivity to Kurdish separatism.

Massoud Barzani, the ruler of the western half of Iraqi Kurdistan, denied that a deal had been struck to put his forces under US control. He said that such an offer would be refused in any case. “It has not been discussed,” he said. “We are ready to co-ordinate, but our Forces will not be under anyone’s command.”

He added that his forces had not received any support from the Americans, blaming Turkish pressure. He also said that Kurdish forces were prepared to defy US insistence not to move into the key cities of Kirkuk and Mosul after the initial bombardment and would not tolerate any US attempt to stop Kurds returning to their ancestral homes there.

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