TURKEY: Iraqi vice president meets Turkish leaders in Ankara ahead of expected foreign ministers' meeting in Istanbul next month

Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi met with Turkish leaders in Ankara on Tuesday (March 27), ahead of an expected foreign ministers' meeting in Istanbul next month to discuss ways to stop the violence in Iraq. Al-Hashemi met with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul after being met at the airport by the governor of Ankara Kemal Onal. Iraq, its neighbours and world powers agreed in principle during a meeting in Baghdad on March 12 to the foreign ministers' meeting in Istanbul. The meeting would be a follow-up to the one-day Baghdad conference which sought ways to stabilise Iraq and prevent its sectarian violence from spreading across the Middle East. Murat Ozcelik, Turkey's deputy special representative on Iraq, told Reuters the Istanbul meeting would take place in the first half of April but said a precise date had yet to be fixed. The meeting would be an expanded version of talks in the Baghdad, where U.S. officials met in the same room with their counterparts from Syria and Iran, among others. Turkey, keen to play a bigger role in the Middle East, has been pressing hard to host the next round of talks. It plans to invite Iraq, its neighbours, Arab states, the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- as well as the remaining members of the Group of Eight main industrialised nations. These are Japan, Germany, Italy and Canada.

ITN Source | March 29, 2007

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