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Turkey, Iraq eye ties with deals on gas, PKK
[Al Arabiya Latest] Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan met Iraq's premier Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Thursday as the neighbors sought to boost ties by signing deals from energy to water sharing and fighting PKK rebels.Relations between Ankara and Baghdad have been strained in the past by the presence of Kurdish separatist rebels who use northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks on southeast Turkey. But trade and diplomatic ties have bloomed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam Hussein and as regional heavyweight Turkey has sought to expand its influence in the Middle East under Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party government. The two countries have estimated trade worth more than $5 billion but there is enormous potential for the future as European Union-candidate Turkey aims to position itself as a vital energy and trade corridor with its eastern neighbors, including Iraq, Iran, Syria and the South Caucasus. Posted by: Fred 2009-10-16 |
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