US Offers Turkey Big Aid Package for Help in Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is offering Turkey an economic aid package that includes about $6 billion in grants and up to $20 billion in loan guarantees in a bid to secure Ankara's support for an invasion of Iraq, sources familiar with the offer said on Saturday.

President Bush met with Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis and others at the White House on Friday, but U.S. and Turkish negotiators have yet to reach a final agreement that would allow American forces to use Turkish bases as a springboard for an invasion of Iraq from the north.

On top of an estimated $6 billion in grants, the Bush administration is offering backing for up to $20 billion in loans that Turkey could secure through private banks. As a condition for U.S. backing, the United States is demanding that the loans fall under the terms of Turkey's program with the International Monetary Fund.

It is unclear whether Ankara will accept the offer, which has ballooned in size in recent days. Turkey, which says it suffered massive economic damage from the first Gulf War, has been pressing Washington for billions of dollars more.

Once a deal is reached, Bush would submit it to Congress for approval as part of an emergency wartime budget request.

Turkey, which has a 218-mile border with Iraq, is allowing the U.S. military to modernize some bases there for possible use in a war, but has not yet given Washington permission to use them for an offensive.

The aid package, coupled with a deal to limit the number of U.S. troops in the country at any one time, could help avoid a backlash from Turks widely opposed to a war against their fellow-Muslim neighbor. Reuters alert: This is not about religion. It's the econoy, stupid!

The Bush administration is finalizing separate multibillion-dollar aid packages for Israel and Jordan which, like Turkey, say they would need U.S. grants and loan guarantees to offset the economic shock of military action to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

An Israeli delegation is due in Washington next week and hopes to quickly finalize the details of its request for $4 billion in military assistance and $8 billion in U.S.-backed loan guarantees.

Under the Israeli proposal, the United States would deduct from the face value of the loan guarantees any Israeli expenditures on settlement activities in Palestinian areas.

Washington has promised Jordan more than $1 billion in aid that could be sent to Congress for approval in coming weeks, officials said.

At close to $25 billion including the loan guarantees, the Turkish package would be well above the initial U.S. offer of $14 billion, which included grants and the funds needed to support up to $10 billion in loans.

The big increase underscores just how important Turkish basing is to U.S. war-planners.

But it is unclear whether the sweetened offer would win support in Ankara, which stepped up pressure on Washington during two days of intense negotiations.

On Thursday Prime Minister Abdullah Gul backed away from a pledge to hold a parliamentary vote on Feb. 18 on whether to let an expected 30,000 U.S. troops use bases in Turkey to invade northern Iraq, saying the timing of the vote was tied to the negotiations in Washington.

The latest U.S. offer is still far below the amount Turkey was purportedly seeking. According to congressional sources, Ankara at one point asked Washington for close to $50 billion in aid -- an amount U.S. officials dismissed as excessive.

Relocating the bases, equipment and troops currently in Germany should also provide a very big boost to the Turkish economy. It would also permanently prepostion forces where they might be needed.

It seems that the Germans don't need, or want, our protection from the USSR anymore. (Conveniently AFTER the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR.) And, like France, they seem to place their economic ties to Iraq above the need to remove a dangerous and ruthless dictator.

It would also assure them of OUR commitment to their security in a dangerous area. (Something Germany, France and Belgium don't seem to care about.)

LOL, in a couple of years the Germans and the French will be begging the rich Turks to move to their country to help bale out their failing economies. That'll really be fun to watch.

Like the other socialists around the world, they abort their children in such numbers that they face a demographic shortfall in coming decades.

They'll be begging Turks and others to move there and become citizens so they can help support German services for a bunch of old socialists who murdered their unborn children rather than give them life.

Germany is now giving substantial tax breaks to families and hiking taxes on everyone else to try to keep the failing socialist boat afloat in an era where American productivity has eclipsed that of Germany, unheard of since the Second World War. But it's too late for Germany's halfway remedies. It's not quite a demographic disaster of Italian proportions but the national character of Germany will change. France and Germany are both in demographic and economic decline.

One can readily understand why Britain and the New Europe want to be members of the EU. But not why they would feel any great urge to bankroll the aging and declining population of Old Europe by approving the new French-designed European federal constitution which is intended to make France and Brussels their masters. Especially after France and Germany have demonstrated exactly what their international leadership really means.

Grim for who? Turkey or Germany? I have no doubt but that the Turks will quickly turn their economy around. America does not forget it's friends (at least it doesn't if we can keep people like Clinton out of office).

We're going to need a list of things the Turks will be exporting to the US so the people can keep an eye out for them. Governments change from time to time, but the people remain the same and will remember.

>> Grim for who?

For those who have to do the killing, and for those who have to witness it and what might follow, least of all for those who will just die..

I keep thinking that these "islamofascists", since they really are so impotent, are one of mother natures distractions, or maybe just a ripple before an earthquake. Maybe these pitiful terrorists are not the real danger. Maybe the real danger was glimpsed in the crack suffered in NATO. Glimpsed in the opinions rendered by the Russians and Chinese on internal NATO business.

To be sure: There are many who are ready to pounce, waiting for the right moment to do it..

Better not run out of bombs and missiles.

I keep thinking that these "islamofascists", since they really are so impotent, are one of mother natures distractions, or maybe just a ripple before an earthquake. Maybe these pitiful terrorists are not the real danger. Maybe the real danger was glimpsed in the crack suffered in NATO. Glimpsed in the opinions rendered by the Russians and Chinese on internal NATO business.

The Russians and Chinese have been and continue to be oppose the existence of NATO. NATO, backed by U.S. power, destroyed the USSR. And despite the Axis of Weasels, NATO still has enough backbone to check Russian nationalism. And to provide the sort of basic international coalition to thwart Chinese designs on the Middle East.

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