Syria presses Turkey over Euphrates water supplies: agency

Terra Daily, via Agence France-Presse: Visiting Syrian Deputy Premier Abdullah Dardari urged Turkey Wednesday to let more water flow into his country from the Euphrates river, Anatolia news agency reported. Dardari said after talks with Turkish officials that the recent drought in Syria had hit water supplies, the agency reported.

Syria and Iraq often complain that their northern neighbour Turkey -- with a series of dams built on the Euphrates and Tigris as part of a massive project to irrigate southeast Anatolia -- monopolises the waters of the two rivers. The Tigris and the Euphrates originate in Turkey and flow south through Syria and Iraq.

Turkish Environment Minister Veysel Eroglu said Turkey too is suffering from drought, but is still letting through an average 500 cubic metres (650 cubic yards) per second of Euphrates water to Syria, under the terms of a 1987 agreement between the two countries. "If the water supply increases, we will not hold it back -- we will, of course, let it flow" to Syria, Anatolia quoted Eroglu as saying.

Dardari is in Turkey for talks to improve economic cooperation and transport links between the two neighbours; he is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul later Wednesday. After decades of animosity, Turkish-Syrian relations improved significantly after 1998, when Damascus forced Turkish Kurd rebel Abdullah Ocalan out of Syria, where he had enjoyed safe haven.

Ocalan, leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was captured in Kenya in 1999 and jailed for life. The turmoil in Turkey and Syria's common neighbour Iraq has also brought the two countries closer.