Kurdish rebels kill 13 Turkish soldiers

They must, however, have an incentive to do so if anyone expects them be helpful. Further isolation is likely only to make them feel more threatened - and therefore more determined to undermine US and/or Israeli policies across the Middle East.

The US relationship with Iraq's Kurds has also been strained of late, with Kurdish officials in northern Iraq protesting against the US detention of five Iranian diplomats that had been visiting Iraq at the request of the Kurdish regional government.

On Monday, Iran opened border crossings with Iraqi Kurdistan that had been closed for weeks in protest of the detentions, the Associated Press reports.

The Iraqis have found themselves caught between two allies as they struggle to balance the interests of their main sponsor the U.S. military and Iran, a major regional ally. Iran holds considerable sway in Iraq as both countries have majority Shiite populations and many members of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ruling Shiite bloc have close ties with Tehran.

The border points, which had been shut down on Sept. 24, were reopened after a Kurdish delegation traveled to Iran to complain the region should not be punished for something the Americans did. Iraqi and Iranian authorities have claimed that the detained Iranian, Mahmoud Farhadi, was in Iraq on official business and demanded his release.

Meanwhile, US-Turkish ties are also being strained over a bill now in the US Congress that would label the massacres of ethnic Armenians in what was then Ottoman Turkey a "genocide," Reuters reports.

The Bush administration opposes a genocide resolution, but Congress is dominated by the Democratic Party, and, according to Turkish media, the Foreign Relations Committee will take up the issue on October 10.

"(The bill) would harm our strategic relationship ... and also damage efforts to develop relations between Turkey and Armenia," the state-run Anatolian news agency quoted [Prime Minister] Tayyip Erdogan as telling Bush in a telephone call.

Some political analysts say Ankara might consider restricting the U.S. military's use of Incirlik Air Base, a logistics hub for the Middle East, if Congress passes the bill.

Some Turkish politicians say the country has options to make life difficult for the United States if the resolution passes, according to a report in Today's Zaman, a Turkish English-language newspaper.

"We are not helpless if this resolution is passed," said Onur Öymen, senior lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and former diplomat, in a phone interview with Today's Zaman yesterday. He noted that Turkey had responded to a US decision to impose a military embargo on Turkey following the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974 by blocking US access to all bases in its territory.

According to Öymen the US may lose a major route for logistics supplies for US troops in Iraq if Turkey decides to stop cooperating with Washington on Iraq, another possible measure to retaliate a congressional approval of the "genocide resolution."

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