"Turkey will have to stay within its borders... If Iraq is dismembered... the consequences will be very dangerous," a press release quoted Papantoniou as saying on the sidelines of a meeting of EU defence officials held on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes.

"I want to believe that the US are conscious of this and will exert their influence to prevent any further Turkish entanglement in northern Iraq," he added.

Some Iraqi Kurds lay claim to northern Iraq's main oil-producing cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, saying they were in the majority there before the cities were taken over by Arabs from the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Turkey has threatened to send its own forces into Iraq to prevent the creation of an independent Kurdish state.

Ankara fears such an entity would revive the nationalist aspirations of its own sizeable Kurdish minority, with which it has established a fragile truce after years of armed conflict.

Washington has sought to control the Kurdish troops and prevent them from becoming a major force in the region.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Friday that the Kurdish fighters who captured Kirkuk on Thursday have now started to move out of the city.

SPACE.WIRE