 | Because they've done so much to help. |
AMMAN - Jordan and Turkey warned Saturday against dividing neighbouring Iraq along sectarian lines, saying that would spark civil war in the already violence-wracked nation and endanger the whole region.
‘A division of Iraq would mean a descent into the abyss and a civil war that ... would also have dangerous repercussions for all neighbouring countries,’ Jordanian Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit told a press conference with visiting Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. ‘We are coordinating with several countries in the region who want peace and stability for Iraq,’ Bakhit said, without elaborating.
| And who might those be? Kuwait? |
Many of Iraq’s neighbours fear rising violence combined with a constitution that enshrines federalism will lead to the country’s breakup into Shia, Sunni and, of particular sensitivity to Ankara, Kurdish zones. Erdogan warned that Turkey ‘will not accept a division of Iraq ... We consider a division of Iraq into three regions as the start of a civil war’.
| But which civil war, theirs or yours? |
Turkey has its own restless Kurdish minority, and many Kurdish separatist rebels are based in northern Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous area. ‘Those who play a bad role to divide Iraq will never be pardoned, neither by history nor by humanity,’ said Erdogan. ‘We cannot, as Iraq’s neigbour, remain neutral and we need to deploy efforts to help it out of the crisis,’ he said, proposing a new meeting of Iraq’s neighbours to discuss the situation there. |