ANKARA, Jan 2 (AFP) - US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage arrived here Sunday for talks with Turkish leaders on the situation in Iraq ahead of elections there due at the end of the month, the news agency Anatolia said.
Armitage, who is shortly due to step down after the resignation of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, is on a regional tour which has already taken him to Syria and Iraq. He also held talks with Iraqi Kurd leader Massoud Barzani in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil.
He was due to meet in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, as well as parliamentary speaker Bulent Arinc and army chief-of-staff General Hilmi Ozkok.
However, no meeting had been planned with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip, Turkish and US sources said.
Turkey considers its relations with its US ally as strategic, but the partnership has been severely strained by the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
A predominantly Muslim but secular country, Turkey last year refused to open up its northern territory to the US for the invasion of Iraq which was bitterly opposed by the public here.
A member of parliament from Erdogan's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in November accused the United States of committing "genocide" in the Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah.
Turkey has also called on Washington on several occasions to act against rebel Kurds from the former PKK separatists now renamed the Kongra-Gel, with Ankara claiming some 5,000 of them are sheltering in Iraqi Kurdistan.
01/02/2005 17:20 GMT - AFP