BERLIN, March 22 (Reuters) - Germany said on Saturday it would withdraw its air crew aboard NATO AWACS planes patrolling airspace over Turkey if Ankara becomes a belligerent force in northern Iraq.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made this clear after a meeting with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Defence Minister Peter Struck in Berlin.
He said that Germany would not accept any change in the purely defensive nature of AWACS surveillance missions in Turkey.
"If Turkey itself becomes a participant in the war that would be a new situation that would lead to the withdrawal of German soldiers from the AWACS aircraft over Turkey," Fischer told journalists. "We will not participate in a war.
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