UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Iraq is in the midst of a civil war and carving it up would only increase the level of violence, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of neighboring Turkey said on Monday, adding that Iran and Syria also opposed a divided Iraq on their border. Iran and Syria "fully agree that the territorial integrity of Iraq must be protected. So any possible division of Iraq is not something that Turkey, Iran or Syria would view positively," he told reporters in New York after recent visits to Tehran and Damascus. Erdogan held a news conference at U.N. headquarters as President George W. Bush's administration weighed a change in course in Iraq nearly four years after invading it in March 2003. Some U.S. lawmakers and Kurds in the region have urged partitioning Iraq, by dividing it into Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish regions, as one way to end the fighting. But the White House and the Iraq Study Group led by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker oppose this option. Erdogan agreed, saying that carving up the country "would increase the level of civil war that is taking place." "And those people who expect to benefit from such a division would actually find themselves in more dire straits if the division of Iraq came to pass," he said. Although Erdogan did not identify those he thought were expecting to benefit, the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq has raised the threat of secession if the Baghdad government did not drop claims to a say in development of oil resources in their area. Turkey, Iran and Syria all have restless Kurdish minorities of their own.
