(London Times) Michael Evans - The United States is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrading several Turkish military bases in preparation for launching an attack on Iraq from the north. Although the new government in Ankara has given only conditional authorization for use of these bases, the U.S. was confident enough of Turkish support for a war on Iraq to tell Baghdad that it was now surrounded. The bases include: Incirlik, where the U.S. Air Force's 39th Air Expeditionary Wing is already stationed for carrying out combat patrols over the northern no-fly zone in Iraq; Diyarbakir, the headquarters of Turkey's second Tactical Air Force Command; Erhac, near the town of Malatya; and Batman, which is near Diyarbakir. During the 1991 Gulf War, Batman was the location of a U.S. special operations task force responsible for rescuing pilots shot down over Iraq. In addition to these four, other bases in the region available to support ground and air attacks include two in Kuwait, one in Qatar, two in Oman, one in Bahrain, and possibly two or three in Saudi Arabia.
2002-12-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive