Turkey's Initiative.

Seeking a major role in the GME, Turkey has forged a new model of co-operation with Iraq and the region's other countries. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Aug. 11 told reporters - on his first official visit to Baghdad since taking the post in May - that Ankara had increased the amount of water it was releasing from the Euphrates River to Syria and Iraq over the past three months and planned to increase that amount further. In return, Baghdad announced plans to crack down on the PKK in the north in co-operation with the KRG.

At a joint news conference after Davutoglu's talks with Maleki and other leaders, Iraq's Kurdish Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said there was a "genuine and sincere desire to solve the water crisis". He said they planned to reactivate a mechanism dealing with water distribution between Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Apart from Euphrates which runs from Turkey to Iraq through north-eastern Syria, Turkey and Iraq share the Tigris River.

Prof. Davutoglu, who for years has been the architect of Turkey's foreign policy as an academic, said: "The suffering of the farmers in any region of Iraq is the suffering of the Turkish farmers themselves". He said Turkey will also help with technology to increase the amount of Iraq's usable water.

Turkey, despite its secular leanings, has been trying to bolster its credentials as a major player in the Saudi-led Muslim world, including mediation between Hamas and Israel and forging relations with Iraq's Shi'ite mullah Muqtada al-Sadr. Ankara's efforts to improve relations with its own Kurdish minority have coincided with warmer relations with Iraq's KRG, including plans to open Turkish consulates in Kurdistan. He said: "Now with this transformation of Iraq and the new dynamic for Turkey, we think there is a need for re-framing our relations".

Iraq, where the first civilisation began between ancient Mesopotamia's two rivers, relies heavily on water from the Euphrates and the Tigris, which comes straight down from Turkey. Turkish hydro-electric dams on the Euphrates have reduced the flow of water in recent years.

Davutoglu said Turkey had increased the water it was releasing to Syria to roughly 500 cubic metres per second. Under an existing agreement, Syria releases 58% of that to Iraq - about 290 CM/second. Baghdad says it needs a full 500 CM/second. Aoun Theyab, operations director at Iraq's Water Ministry, says: "We are facing a drought, so this is a crucial issue". Iraq, which is in its fourth consecutive year of drought, is facing its lowest harvest in a decade this year.

Zebari said Baghdad was committed to clamping down on attacks by PKK rebels from Iraq. He then announced the joint operation centre in Erbil. Iraqi Kurdistan has been governed since 1991 by the region's two main political groups: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Mas'oud Barzani, who is president of the whole Kurdish region; and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, who is president of the whole of Iraq. Kurdistan itself is a federation: the KDP is feudal in control of the enclave's western part bordering with Turkey; the PUK is ideological in control of the eastern part bordering with Iran. KDP's base is in its capital, Erbil - also the capital of Kurdistan. PUK's base is Suleimaniya. There is little PUK/KDP affinity with the PKK, which attacks Turkish soldiers and civilians, particularly as KRG and Baghdad relations with Ankara improve).

Turkey, one of Iraq's biggest trading partners, has been playing a key role in Iraq's economic reconstruction. Zebari on Aug. 11 said annual trade between Iraq and Turkey had reached $7bn - a figure aimed to reach $20 bn by end-2010. The Turkish Minister of State for Industry, Zafer Ca?layan, says bilateral trade has risen 58% from 2008. An estimated 50,000 Turkish workers are in Iraq, many of them in Kurdistan.

US Proposes Tripartite Force For The North: The top US military commander in Iraq, Army Lt-Gen Ray Odierno, has proposed setting up security teams formed of Iraqi, Kurdish and US forces to protect volatile northern areas disputed by Kurds and Arabs from insurgent attacks. The idea, which might require a modification of the US-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to allow US troops to return to northern cities and villages, has met with positive response from Baghdad and Erbil.

Maleki's cabinet on Aug. 17 approved a bill paving the way for a referendum on the SOFA. The referendum is the next major milestone in the gradual US withdrawal from Iraq. If the Iraqis reject the SOFA, the roughly 130,000 US soldiers still in Iraq will be given just a year to leave. The referendum was supposed to be held in July, but is now due to be held at the same time as legislative elections, scheduled for Jan. 16, 2010.

Gen Odierno on Aug. 17 said: The tripartite arrangement, if approved, would be "a little bit" like a US peace-keeping mission between the rival forces as they face off in a potentially explosive dispute over land, power and oil, including Kirkuk. He said: "It won't be for long. If we do it it'll be just to build confidence in the [Iraqi and Kurdish] forces, till they are comfortable working together".

Devastating Neo-Salafi bombings have killed scores in the north - and hundreds of Shi'ites in Baghdad where daily attacks have intensified - since US forces pulled out of Iraqi cities at end-June, triggering accusations of blame between Arabs and Kurds, and fuelling tensions between the KRG and the Shi'ite-led central cabinet. The north is dotted with areas which the Kurds claim as their ancestral lands, including the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oilfields and several north-western towns near Mosul, capital of Nineveh Province bordering with Syria.

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