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US and Turkish officials are expected to resume their talks Saturday on Ankara's plans to send troops to northern Iraq, diplomatic sources said Friday.
The talks, which deadlocked earlier in the week, will be resumed after US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad returns from talks with Kurdish leaders in the region, the sources said.
Khalilzad went to northern Iraq early this week after two days of inconclusive talks with Turkish officials here. He is expected to return to Ankara after midnight on Friday.
The United States has been strongly against Ankara's plans to deploy soldiers in northern Iraq out of its worries that such a move could complicate its own military campaign in the area and trigger clashes between Turkish forces and local Kurds, a key US ally against Baghdad.
Turkey already has several thousand soldiers in northern Iraq, where it has maintained a military presence since 1997 to fight Turkish Kurdish rebels who have fled to the mountainous enclave.
(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2003)
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