Syria warns against carving up Iraq to free Kurds

"We are opposed, not only to a Kurdish state but also to any action against the territorial integrity of Iraq," he told the Turkish-language station of CNN television on the eve of a historic visit to Turkey, the first by a Syrian leader for 58 years. Turkey is home to about half the Kurds -- an ethnically distinct people numbering between 25 and 35 million and living in a mountainous region stretching into Syria, Iraq and Iran.

"Iraq's future is bound to the future of all of us," Assad said. "For that reason, the break-up of Iraq would be a red line, not only as far as Syria and Turkey are concerned, but for all the countries in the region."

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Iraq's Kurdish minority -- estimated at between four and five million -- was brutally repressed by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, but its leaders have been brought into the interim governing council established since the US-led invasion of Iraq and some have voiced demands for autonomy.

On Saturday, the current president of the 25-member council, Adnan Pachachi, urged the Kurds to be patient, saying: "We have accepted federalism in principle, but there are different forms of federalism in the world and I cannot tell you for the moment what the final form will be in Iraq."

Pachachi, a Sunni Muslim Arab, said in a broadcast on Iraqi television that the status of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq would be "defined by the constitution which will be drafted by a freely elected body," but noted that such a body was not due to be elected until March 2005.