US Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice-chairman General James Cartwright and General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, held talks with Turkish Deputy chief of General Staff General Ergin Saygun, a brief statement said.

"The meeting focused on Iraq, continuing cooperation in the fight against our common enemy the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers' Party), and on comprehensive intelligence-sharing," it said.

The NTV news channel said the Americans left for Iraq after the talks to meet the central government in Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, where the PKK uses bases to launch attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

Earlier this month, US President George W. Bush announced after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington that the three generals would keep in close contact to coordinate efforts to flush out the PKK from its northern Iraqi positions.

In a move largely seen as tacit US approval for limited cross-border Turkish strikes, Bush also pledged that Washington would provide Turkey with real-time intelligence on the PKK.

Ankara said last week that the intelligence-sharing had begun.

The Turkish parliament last month authorized the government to order troops into northern Iraq if necessary to strike at the PKK bases there.

Turkey has massed an estimated 100,000 troops and military equipment on the border with Iraq.

But Erdogan signalled Tuesday that Ankara would not rush into an immediate cross-border strike.

"We are not gun-toting cowboys... Our security forces will use the mandate (given by parliament) when the time comes," he told his Justice and Development Party's caucus, adding that "common sense" would prevail.

Speaking in Brussels, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the likelihood of a large-scale Turkish military operation had diminished.

"We believe the chances of a major invasion are less now," he told reporters. "Turkey has shown wisely a great deal of restraint in order not to destabilise the situation in Iraq, especially when things are moving positively."

More than 37,000 people have died since the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community, launched an armed campaign in 1984 for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

Washington and Baghdad oppose any large-scale Turkish military action in northern Iraq, fearing it could destabilise the only relatively calm part of the war-torn country.

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