ANKARA, Sept 23 (AFP) - Turkish and US officials met Friday to seek ways of increasing global and regional military cooperation, a US embassy source said, but denied reports that the US had sought permission to deploy warplanes at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey.
The official denied as "speculation" reports that the US delegation officially asked Turkey permission to deploy 48 F-16 fighter planes at Incirlik.
"There are no proposals about Incirlik, there are no proposals about deploying planes at Incirlik," he said.
There have been insistent press reports that Washington wants to move a squadron of F-16s from Germany to the base near Adana as part of a project to redeploy its forces in Europe to better counter the threat of global terrorism.
"This is a regular, routine meeting of the political-military working group, which convenes several times a year," the US source said, on condition of anonymity.
"Its purpose is to discuss broad issues of Turkish-US cooperation, such as NATO, new threats, the struggle against terrorism, ways in which Turkey and US can increase cooperation in the region such as the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Iraq," he said.
Ian Brezinski, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for NATO and Europe, is heading the US delegation at the talks at general staff headquarters in Ankara, the official said.
The Incirlik base was used by US and British warplanes to patrol the no-fly zone over northern Iraq from between the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Ankara then limited the use of the base to logistic and humanitarian purposes; US forces have also used the base for refuelling and troop rotations into Iraq and Afghanistan.