22 August 2006 WASHINGTON - Ankara will not be able to prevent the founding of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, a former senior US diplomat said late Monday. The American advisor to Iraq’s Kurdish leaders said that Kurds in Turkey would choose a Turkey in the process of joining the European Union over other alternatives.

Peter Galbraith, who is now serving as an advisor to Iraq’s Kurdish leaders, said that even Turkey was coming to the realisation that it could not stop the establishment of a Kurdish state on its borders. However, Gailbraith claimed that the traditional position of seeing an independent Kurdish state as major threat to Turkey was changing.

There was already a Kurdish state established in northern Iraq and that in time it would win its official independence, Galbraith said. The view is developing that the problem could not be solved by occupying northern Iraq, and that such a measure would lead to Turkey being thrown out of Europe and worsening its relations with the US, he said.