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. US troops arrive in Turkey[This is a sell out by a puppet regime that has been bribed with $26 billion in aid from the USA. The will of the Turkish people has been cast aside and their homeland converted to a military base to enable the destruction of Iraq. Without Turkey's assistance this war would have been much more unlikely to occur, acceptance of US troops on Turkish soil in this instance amounts to a declaration of war on Iraq.] Five giant US Air Force cargo planes disgorged hundreds of American soldiers at a military air base in southeastern Turkey, according to local residents. The troops are believed to be mainly engineers and logistics experts who have been given the go-ahead by Ankara to upgrade Turkish military facilities ahead of a possible US-led war in Iraq. CNN Turkey reported as many as 500 troops disembarked at the heavily-guarded air base at Diyarbakir, some 650 kilometres southeast of the capital Ankara. Meanwhile at an emergency meeting, Turkey's government debated whether to ask parliament to approve the deployment of a much larger combat force of US soldiers to bases near the Iraqi border. Ankara has been under enormous pressure from Washington to permit such a deployment, which would allow US-led forces to enter Iraq from the north in support of an attack on Baghdad from Kuwait in the south. Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis and Economy Minister Ali Babacan returned from the United States where they met US President George W. Bush, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and Secretary of State Colin Powell. "The discussions are now over, the ball is in the Turkish parliament's court," Marc Grossman, US State Department representative and former US ambassador to Turkey, told CNN Turkey. Although the government was due to ask parliament on Tuesday to approve the larger combat deployment, Yakis told reporters it would be very difficult to present such a request. Recent opinion polls show some 80 per cent of Turks are opposed to a war to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. Washington is believed to have offered billions of dollars in financial guarantees to Ankara to mitigate the feared economic consequences for Turkey of a war against its oil-rich neighbour. Small numbers of suspected US special forces or intelligence agents have been seen in Turkey but deployment marks the arrival of the first significant contingent of US troops here. Turkey and the United States signed a deal on February 8 outlining the rules under which the engineers and logistics specialists are to upgrade Turkish military facilities. Under the agreement, the US personnel would have three months to work on "renovation, development, construction, expansion and infrastructure work at military bases, facilities and ports." The number of US specialists and the facilities to be upgraded have not been revealed but press reports have suggested 3,500 US experts could be on the way. The ministry said clauses in existing bilateral and multilateral agreements, covering compensation of damages caused to Turkish soldiers or Turkish army facilities and equipment, had been "expanded to a considerable extent in favor of Turkey." ©2003 AFP
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