Thursday, August 24, 2006 / ANKARA -  The Turkish capital has dismissed the comments made by a top U.S. adviser to Iraqi Kurdish leaders regarding Turkey and the “reality” of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

  Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Zagreb, said in an address to the Middle East Institute on Monday that the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq has already become a de facto independent state, only lacking a seat at the United Nations, and that winning formal independence was just a matter of time.

  “Turkey has long viewed anything Kurdish as an anathema, a threat to its national integrity, but that attitude is changing. Now there's a significant body of opinion that basically adopts a different approach,” he said when asked to comment on Ankara's position on an independent Kurdish state.

  When asked about Galbraith's assertion during a weekly press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Namık Tan highlighted the fact that although Galbraith was “an expert,” his assertions were not binding.

  “Our counterpart is the U.S. administration,” Tan said briefly.

  Galbraith said at the time that the new understanding developing in Turkey, stemming partly from EU-related political reforms, acknowledged that invading northern Iraq was not an option, because this would involve huge political and military complications.

  Galbraith is an advisor to both Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and head of the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). However, sources say he is closer to Barzani. He was in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 war and during last year's negotiations for a constitution.