ISTANBUL - Akin Kinikli, Trade Attache of Turkey's Consulate General in New York and Turkey-United States Chamber of Trade and Industry Chairman, said on Wednesday that they should be optimistic about inclusion of Turkey in projects on Iraq, but it could take some time.
Kinikli who replied questions of reporters in a meeting entitled, ''Turkey-United States commercial relations'' which was held in Istanbul Chamber of Trade (ITO) said that they held talks on re-building program of Iraq with several authorities of the United States.
Stating that during his contacts with U.S. Department of Commerce, he was told that a team was formed regarding the issue, Kinikli said that they would be informed about developments. Kinikli said, ''we may face with some problems in the beginning, but I believe that U.S. and other western companies will make business in re-building process of Iraq by means of Turkey due to its geographical location, level of production, economic capacity, geographical closeness to Iraq and because Turkish construction sector has a very important place in international markets.''
Concerning reflection of Turkey's attitude in Iraq war to Turkey-United States relations, Kinikli noted that he believed that all problems would be overcome soon.
Kinikli said that Turkey could not take sufficient share from the U.S. market which had a 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars of annual volume and added that the U.S. private sector had a positive attitude toward Turkey. He counted cooperation fields with the United States as agriculture, construction, energy and pipelines.
Stating that Turkey could not make good use of products which the United States allowed to be imported duty-free, Kinikli said, ''the United States allows 4,000 kinds of products to be imported duty-free from 140 countries. We could only use 550-600 million U.S. dollars of 1 billion U.S. dollars of volume.''
Kinikli said that there was about 7 billion U.S. dollars of trade volume between the two countries and Turkey had nearly 500 million U.S. dollars of trade surplus and noted, ''if everything is ok, it can reach about 10 billion U.S. dollars.''
When a reporter said that the United States held motion issue on the agenda and asked what kind of attitude the United States was expecting from Turkey, he said, ''we should be optimistic about inclusion of Turkey in projects on Iraq. But, it can take some time. United Nations also has some programs for Iraq. They have been holding meetings in the office of the attache for ten days. They need transportation companies, first aid materials and depots. There are some studies on procurement of these things from Turkey. We presented a list of 300-400 companies to them.''
(EÖ-AÖ) 14.05.2003