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7/16/2002 (1:25) |
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'Civilian killed' in fresh strikes on Iraq
Iraqi MPs have been speculating over US plans
American and British aircraft struck twice in Iraq over the weekend in attacks which Baghdad says left one civilian dead and six others injured.
A senior Pentagon official said that coalition planes patrolling no-fly zones over Iraq had hit air defence facilities on Saturday, while on Sunday they destroyed a mobile radar used for a surface-to-air missile launch.
But Brigadier General John Rosa also insisted that the strikes had been carried out in retaliation for earlier attacks on coalition aircraft, and that they did not mark an increase in US and British military activity in the country.
There has been persistent speculation about US plans to topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, which US President George W Bush described as being part of an 'axis of evil' in his controversial State of the Union address.
Wooing Turkey
US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz said during a brief visit to Afghanistan on Monday that Saddam Hussein was too dangerous a threat to ignore, although he added that Washington had yet to decide on how to deal with the Iraqi leader.
Wolfowitz will raise Iraq in talks with neighbouring Turkey
The US says Iraq is working to develop weapons of mass destruction, but this is hard to prove as United Nations weapons inspectors have not been in the country since December 1998.
Mr Wolfowitz is preparing for a round of talks with Turkish leaders on Tuesday, in which he is widely expected to raise the question of Iraq.
Turkey, which borders Iraq, could play a key role if the US tries to force Saddam Hussein from power. The US already uses the Turkish base at Incirlik to enforce the no-fly zone over northern Iraq.
But correspondents say that the US is a long way off convincing Turkey, currently in the clutches of a political crisis, that a military campaign in Iraq is something it should support.
During a visit to Turkey's largest city of Istanbul shortly after his arrival, Mr Wolfowitz ruled out the prospect of Washington's support for the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Such a state would destabilise the region and prove unacceptable to the US, he said.
Turkey, which has a substantial Kurdish minority of its own, was involved in a long war with separatist rebels in the 1980s and 1990s.
The no-fly zones over Iraq were imposed by the US, Britain and France after the Gulf War, in what was described as a humanitarian effort to protect both the Kurds in the north and the Shi'a Muslims in the south.
The no-fly zones were not authorised by the UN and are not specifically sanctioned by any Security Council resolution. Iraq considers them a violation of its sovereignty.
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