Turks, Saudis Offer to Assist a War on Iraq

The Turkish government Tuesday offered the use of its bases in a potential war against Iraq, as U.S. officials confirmed that Saudi Arabia has also agreed to give its long-sought military support, twin moves that could clear the way for a formidable attack on multiple fronts.

Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis said that Turkey would not necessarily accept large numbers of U.S. ground troops but that the United States would be allowed to use air bases to launch combat flights into Iraq to the south.

Yakis, whose Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party came to power last week, emphasized that the Turks want the United States to leave “no stone unturned” in seeking to avert war, and Turkish officials have made it known they would like a U.N. resolution authorizing force before action is taken. Yakis nonetheless pledged to provide military support.

“If it comes to that, then of course we’ll cooperate with the United States,” said Yakis, whose country could win much-needed U.S. aid if it joined an anti-Iraq coalition. Asked to elaborate, he added, “Cooperation is the opening of the airspace, first of all, and utilization of facilities in Turkey.”

The news came as Saudi Arabia, another member of the coalition that fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War but has shown reluctance to join a second war with Baghdad, agreed to allow a U.S.-led coalition to use its airspace and the Prince Sultan Air Base if the Bush administration leads a coalition against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, administration officials said on condition of anonymity.

The informal agreements, which came with strings, would dramatically expand the United States’ leverage in pressing Hussein to eliminate any weapons of mass destruction.

“It’s important that he see that he’s surrounded by the international community, not only in the political sense but in a real practical military sense, and Turkey has a very important role to play in that regard,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who is leading a U.S. delegation on a visit to the new Turkish ruling party.

The developments came even as Iraqi officials allowed U.N. weapons inspectors immediate access to a presidential palace Tuesday -- and as the administration continued its anti-Hussein drumbeat, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saying that if inspectors don’t find anything on their searches, that will mean merely that Iraq has hidden its weapons very well.

The Turkish bases in particular are key to the Pentagon’s strategy, defense officials and military experts said.

“Turkey is obviously crucial. I don’t think you could do anything without Turkey,” said Eliot Cohen, a military analyst at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. “The United States is less dependent on the Saudis, but [their support] gives the United States a lot more room to maneuver.”

U.S. and British planes routinely fly from Incirlik in southern Turkey to patrol the “no-fly” zone in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. War contingency plans for Iraq call for the U.S.-led coalition to crush Hussein’s military by striking from the north as well as from U.S. bases to the south and, possibly, the west. Saudi Arabia is a southern and western neighbor of Iraq.

“Two-front wars are hard to fight. Three-front wars are even harder to fight,” a senior U.S. official said. “If we have to, we can come at him from any direction.”

The offer to use well-positioned military sites from a critical ally across Iraq’s northern border came during Wolfowitz’s visit here. The primary goal of the No. 2 Pentagon official’s visit, part of a new Bush administration campaign to rally allies for a possible war, was to garner backing from the United States’ most Western-leaning Muslim ally in the region.

Speaking to reporters between meetings in Ankara, the capital, before the Turkish foreign minister’s comments, Wolfowitz seemed visibly buoyed.

“It’s been an excellent day,” he said. “I do feel that we have obtained a common understanding.”

The agreement with Saudi Arabia was perhaps less expected. Threatened by Iraq in the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia has remained reluctant to agree to let coalition bombers attack its neighbor from Saudi soil.

The Pentagon had grown so doubtful of Saudi aid that it has tried to replicate the Saudi air operations center on a smaller scale in the neighboring Gulf state of Qatar. If the Saudis follow through, Pentagon planners will have obtained the bulk of the cooperation they had sought from an ally whose wariness stems largely from its citizens’ opposition to a war in Iraq. The Prince Sultan base is a $1-billion facility built by the United States after the Gulf War and used to direct airstrikes in Afghanistan.

“We don’t need facilities for troops on the ground” in Saudi Arabia, one senior U.S. official said.

The acquiescence by the Saudi ruling family followed mounting pressure from U.S. critics in Congress and elsewhere that began with the disclosure that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals and that intensified with the recent disclosure that the wife of the kingdom’s U.S. ambassador may have, knowingly or unwittingly, financially supported two of the hijackers.

“If you’re a Saudi, the prospect of being left out in the cold with a really hostile United States is not something they want, and I think at the end of the day they knew that,” Cohen said.

Turkey’s pledge of support included significant caveats. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, Turkish officials interpret the U.N. resolution that demands Hussein declare and give up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons as requiring a second Security Council vote before force could be used against Iraq.

Omer Celik, a lawmaker and political advisor to Turkey’s new ruling party, said a second U.N. resolution “would be helpful” in legitimizing a call for war, but neither he nor Yakis said he would insist on one.

Turkish leaders also voiced concern that strong opposition by Turks to a war would make it difficult for the nation’s leaders to approve a massive foreign infantry presence on Turkish soil.

“If we are talking of extensive presence of the American forces in Turkey, we have difficulties in extending this [due] to the Turkish public opinion,” Yakis told a small group of reporters at his residence in Ankara. “It may be difficult to see tens of thousands of American forces being transported through the Turkish territory into Iraq, or being stationed or deployed somewhere in Turkey and then carrying out strikes inside Iraq. We have to know first of all the extent to which this number will go up.”

The Turkish government later issued a clarification of the foreign minister’s statement that said he was discussing only “possibilities,” not promises.

U.S. and Turkish officials denied reports in Turkish media that Wolfowitz had asked Turkey to offer the use of half a dozen bases and 35,000 troops, presumably for border patrol and refugee management, saying they had not yet decided on specific numbers. One senior U.S. official said the Pentagon would not seek to involve Turkish troops in direct combat.

Pentagon strategists reason that a coalition that included Turkey could pose a more formidable military force that would either dissuade Hussein from challenging U.N. weapons inspections or speed a U.S.-led force to victory. Turkey would benefit through regional stability and increased trade in a post-Hussein Iraq, the thinking goes.

Wolfowitz and his delegation are discussing with the Turks ways to ease the economic turmoil of a war in Iraq that could further depress trade and tourism in a Turkish economy that has never fully recovered from the 1991 war, a senior U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. The aid is likely to come in part from the International Monetary Fund but also to include direct assistance, the official said.

“The Turks want basically two things: no independent state for the Iraqi Kurds in the north, and they want a ton of dough,” a senior Western diplomat said. “Billions and billions of dollars, and I think we’re going to pay it.”

The effort to secure Turkey’s contribution in any war with Iraq followed queries by the State Department to dozens of governments for possible support, some of it outside the Persian Gulf, in order to free up American resources, a second senior U.S. official said.

*

Times staff writers Jeffrey Fleishman in Ankara and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.