Iraq warns of 'regional war' over Turkey meddlings

Iraq and Turkey yesterday summoned their respective ambassadors in a bitter war of words between the two neighbours ahead of a planned operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from jihadists.

The dispute centres around Turkish troops deployed near Mosul, a presence that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has strongly opposed and said he fears could lead to "regional war."

The Turkish parliament at the weekend extended by one year a government mandate allowing its troops to deploy on both Iraqi and Syrian territory.

The Iraqi parliament condemned the decision, calling for the withdrawal of the Turkish troops already there.

"We do not want to enter a regional conflict," Abadi told a news conference in Baghdad, saying he fears "the Turkish adventure will turn into a regional war."

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned of possible sectarian consequences arising from the Mosul operation, prompting the Iraqi foreign ministry to summon the Turkish ambassador over "provocative Turkish statements".

Mosul, Iraq's second city, was seized by the Islamic State (IS) group in 2014 after multiple Iraqi divisions collapsed in the face of a jihadist assault.

But Baghdad is now planning, with help from a US-led coalition, a major operation to retake the city, which had a population of two million before the IS invasion.

Ankara has made clear it does not want to be left on the sidelines.

Abadi has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the presence of Turkish troops on Iraqi soil and demanded that they be withdrawn.

But the forces are in territory controlled by the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, whose government has close relations with Ankara.

Erdogan suggested at the weekend that the liberation of Mosul had to be conducted by those with ethnic and religious ties to the city, objecting to the use of Shiite militiamen or anti-Ankara Kurdish forces.

Turkey is an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country with increasingly close ties to Sunni Muslim kingpin Saudi Arabia.